


The New Year's Resolution

by RamandaWart



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-06-11 16:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15319959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RamandaWart/pseuds/RamandaWart
Summary: Come New Year’s Eve most people dream of getting fit, making more time for themselves, or cutting down on their caffeine intake. Enjolras, student by necessity and revolutionary by choice, dreams bigger. Follow along as Enjolras resolves to change the world through a year of planning, passion, and plenty of coffee. Of course, things never go quite the way you expect them to – and certainly no exception is made for Enjolras, whose grandiose plans are turned on their head by the participation of a certain green-eyed artist.





	1. The New Year's Resolution

“Come on Enjolras, I don’t think today is the best day to be recruiting.” 

Enjolras continued marching on towards the campus green with the single-mindedness of a soldier, doing an excellent job of ignoring Combeferre’s pleas. It was 10 o’clock in the morning on January first. Nevermind the fact that most students were still gone on their winter break, or that the few who remained were still hungover in their beds, Enjolras was on a mission. “Whether it’s a good day or not, Combeferre, the world is waiting to be changed.”

Heaving a huge sigh, Combeferre slowed his pace and fell back into line with Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac, who should have been among the few laying hungover in their beds. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was still drunk.”

He received a small grunt in reply, and turned away from Enjolras’s increasingly distant figure to focus on the friend he might actually be able to help. Courfeyrac was a mess on a good day – not that that was a bad thing for him to be. Courfeyrac as a mess was still more kind and energetic than most people at their best. Nevertheless, today was not a good day. Today Courfeyrac was pale, with bloodshot eyes and hair sticking up at all angles, wearing a ratty white t-shirt and what were, essentially, boxers. He wasn’t even wearing shoes, a fact which Combeferre was ashamed he didn’t catch before they were both dragged out of their apartment by the whirlwind that is Enjolras. A cool breeze rolled through and prompted a violent shiver that shook Courf to the tips of his hair, prompting Combeferre to shrug off his sturdy grey jacket and wrap it around the other boy’s shoulders. “Don’t worry Courf, I’m sure he’ll realize that this is useless after an hour or two of standing in the cold, trying to pass out pamphlets to the only ones here this time of year – the pigeons.”

That comment brought out a hint of a smile, and Combeferre deemed it safe to reach out and wrap an arm around his barefoot friend’s shoulder. Both men stopped when they heard a large splash come from up ahead and upon straining to see what caused it, it was Courfeyrac who spotted a shining blonde head emerge from the large fountain in the middle of the campus green. Courf began shaking from laughter rather than exposure to the elements, standing on the sidewalk guffawing while Combeferre – ever the concerned and rational friend – ran ahead to pull Enjolras out of the clutches of the freezing fountain. The time it took Combeferre to make it to the fountain was enough for the fearless and passionate Enjolras to stalk over to the stone edge of the structure and climb out, looking rather like a dog who had reluctantly succumbed to a bath at the hands of its owner. Wise enough to notice that Enjolras was seething enough to practically evaporate the water dripping off of his person, Combeferre clamped down on the laughter threatening to break loose and simply raised an eyebrow at the man. “A little cold out for a swim, Enjolras. Joly would be going on and on about hypothermia if he were actually  _ awake _ right now.”

Enjolras emitted what seemed to be a growl and shook out his hair, attempting to regain some of the impressive presence he usually commanded. Realizing this was unlikely to happen after tripping and falling into a fountain – how did he even fall in, the stone partition was almost half his height! – Enjolras settled for casting his gaze around the green. The sight was disappointing: Everywhere he looked there was no one. Enjolras had woken up that morning with a plan. Admittedly it had been more of a half-baked drunken thought bunny, created the night before with an equally drunk Courfeyrac and Combeferre, but it had stuck with Enjolras even through his morning hangover haze, filling his entire being with purpose. Enjolras had always been a person of passion and belief, and often the task of refining those beliefs fell to Combeferre and Courfeyrac. When he was a teen there had been no outlet for his passions except these fervent debates with his two friends, and while they were welcome occasions, they didn’t even begin to satisfy the burning need Enjolras felt, the need to  _ do _ something. He had hoped that going to college, somewhere far away from his old restraints, would give him the freedom to enact change in the world, but after a semester filled with lackluster organizations that refused to take a substantial stand his hopes had dwindled. Then last night, as he was bemoaning his predicament over the bottle of wine he had claimed for himself out of Courfeyrac’s stash, a solution came to him as if from an angel of God. That is, if angels tended to be drunk, half-naked, and named Combeferre. “Just fuck those organizations, Enjolras. They don’t have your...your…”

“Majestic flowing locks?” Courfeyrac loved to pet Enjolras’s hair when he was drunk. And when he was sober.

“No no no,” Combeferre waved away the suggestion with a flick of his hand. “They don’t have your passion. You don’t need them. You should just make your own organization and you can do all the fucking radical shit you want!”

All the fucking radical shit you want...so maybe Enjolras’s angels weren’t quite as eloquent as messengers of God tended to be, but the point was a good one nonetheless. And now here he was, hair dripping and clothes plastered to his body in the middle of campus, with a bitch of a hangover. And there were his heavenly messengers, dry but looking equally horrendous, laughing up a storm as he shivered in the freezing January air. Well Enjolras would not be swayed from his New Year’s resolution, and his friends would just have to bear the honor of helping him start this organization since they planted the idea in his mind in the first place. Despite his faith in the resolution itself Enjolras was beginning to realize the futility of passing out pamphlets today. One more sweep of his gaze around the green and he confirmed that it was indeed empty. Combeferre must have sensed his disappointment, as he always did, because he took a break from trying to rub warmth back into Courfeyrac’s hands to pat Enjolras’s still dripping shoulder. “Don’t worry Enjolras. You don’t want the people who stay in bed all day on your side. You want the people like you, so full of passion that they defy the normal order of things. And you want people like me and Courf, who believe in people like you so damn much that we’ll follow you outside in freezing weather with New Year’s Eve hangovers, even when we know it’s a longshot.”

“I would just like to interject something.” Enjolras and Combeferre turned to Courfeyrac who, in addition to being unkempt and shivering, was now also red-faced from laughing. “I did not choose to follow either of you out into this godforsaken day. I would much rather be in bed sleeping off a hangover. I do, however, believe in you.”

“Well, look who finally woke up!” Combeferre reached over and smoothed a hand through Courfeyrac’s wild hair, the sight of which brought a small smile to Enjolras’s face.

“You’re right, Ferre. Thank you both for being here. I admit I didn’t think this through very well, I’ll blame the Merlot.”

Courfeyrac pointed an accusing finger at Enjolras. “You’re damn right you didn’t. But then again, I didn’t think I needed socks when I left the apartment today and look how miserable I am now. It’s hard to think things through when your head is pounding.”

“Well, we’re all already here – we may as well try and make some good out of our efforts,” Combeferre laughed.

“How? There’s nobody out here and all the pamphlets are ruined from my dip in the fountain.”

Courfeyrac cackled and lifted up his shirt to reveal a small stack of papers tucked suspiciously into the waistband of his boxers. Much to the amusement of Enjolras, Courf pulled the bundle out with a flourish and presented them to a very pink Combeferre. “I made some flyers of my own last night. There may be some typos, but you can thank drunken me for having the foresight that many sober people lack.”

Enjolras smiled as Ferre finally took the papers from Courfeyrac’s hand. “Well, let’s get to it then. There’s got to be somebody wandering around this campus.” And then Courfeyrac decided to reach down and scratch his thigh, half bare even with his boxers. “But first,” Enjolras amended, “let’s go get Courfeyrac some pants.”

  
  



	2. The Green Boxers

By the time they reached the stairs to Courfeyrac and Combeferre’s apartment, Enjolras was shivering so thoroughly that he was beginning to think Joly’s constant cautioning about the dangers of hypothermia might not have been entirely unfounded. Of course, for the sake of his pride, he would never  _ admit  _ such a thing, instead attempting to meet Combeferre’s poorly concealed amusement with a coolly composed raise of his eyebrows. Unfortunately, Enjolras’s valiant effort was undercut somewhat by his teeth as they stubbornly continued to chatter. 

“I don’t suppose you want my coat?” Combeferre offered lightly, to the disgruntled protestations of Courfeyrac, who remained bundled snugly in the soft grey fabric as he ascended the stairs ahead of them. 

“No, Ferre, I’m perfectly fine, and besides, I think Courfeyrac would—”

Enjolras was spared from having to describe exactly how Courfeyrac would react when he was interrupted by Courfeyrac himself screeching. Another person barreling down the stairs had just plowed into him, knocking him backwards and scattering the bundle of hastily made flyers.

“Shit, dude, sorry!” The boy who ran into them whirled around, reaching out to steady Courfeyrac as he regained his balance, allowing Enjolras to get a good look at him. His dark hair was wildly curly and horrendously disheveled, either the result of bedhead or some New Year’s party gone overboard. Enjolras considered there to be more evidence for the latter, however, judging by the dark smudges beneath the boy’s eyes, eyes which themselves were a color somewhere between green and blue. Perhaps the more glaringly obvious evidence was that he seemed to have borrowed some fashion advice from Courfeyrac; despite the frigid January air, he was clad only in a faded t-shirt and a ratty pair of green boxers, with a pair of jeans slung over his shoulder as though they were gathered up in a quick escape.

Enjolras realized he’d been staring at those boxers for just a moment too long when he finally shifted his gaze to the boy’s face and caught him looking back at him with a lopsided grin. After a beat, the other boy bent down to help Courfeyrac gather up the pamphlets that were now scattered on the stairs. 

“It’s cool,” Courfeyrac was saying, “I just wasn’t watching where I was – where are your pants!?”

“I might ask you the same question,” the other boy remarked, quirking an eyebrow as he straightened up to hand Courfeyrac an armful of pamphlets. Apparently deciding that this was an entirely fair assessment, Courfeyrac simply shrugged genially, turning to Enjolras with an expectant stare. Enjolras, still literally and figuratively frozen in place, couldn’t quite seem to tear his eyes away from the boy’s slightly crooked nose, the shadow of stubble gracing his cheeks, and missed Courfeyrac’s glance entirely. It wasn’t until Combeferre cleared his throat in a slightly less than subtle manner that Enjolras remembered his resolution, the reason that they were standing here shivering in the stairwell in the first place. 

“By the way, we were –” 

“Well, I should probably –” 

Enjolras and the stranger began speaking at the same time, stammering over each other as Enjolras tried desperately to retain some of the formidable composure that he usually possessed. 

“We were—we were thinking of starting a club, actually, if you were—if you wanted a—” Enjolras gestured weakly at the pamphlets that the boy had just handed over to Courfeyrac. For the first time, Enjolras was beginning to second-guess this whole idea, wishing that his drunk mind was more inclined to the typical pursuits of dancing on tables and texting exes than formulating plans for world-changing societies. The dark-haired boy was looking at him with a mixture of skepticism and bemusement, as though he couldn’t quite believe that any organization was worthy of being marketed to him at such an ungodly hour in such a strange manner. However, he simply bit his lip, perhaps to stifle a retort, and took the pamphlet that Courfeyrac proffered, all without taking his eyes off of Enjolras’s face. Enjolras felt his ears turning pink despite himself. 

“Hope to see you there,” Combeferre, ever the voice of reason, finally interjected, breaking the silence that had been stretching on for what seemed like eternity. 

“Sure thing,” the boy chirped, nodding in Combeferre’s direction. “Now, I enjoy free balling as much as the next guy, but it’s practically below freezing out here, and I’d like to go put some clothes on, if I could…”

Enjolras realized a beat too late that he was blocking the boy’s way and quickly stepped to the side, allowing him to bound down the stairs as gracefully as anyone who has just been caught in the midst of a walk of shame can. 

As soon as the boy was out of earshot, Courfeyrac whistled, eyeing Enjolras with a look that he couldn’t quite comprehend but was fairly sure he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of.

“What?” Enjolras retorted, masking his genuine confusion with a layer of defensiveness, as anyone who’s known Courfeyrac for any significant period of time should be inclined to do. Courfeyrac and Combeferre, infuriating as they often were, simply shared a knowing look over his head before traipsing again in the direction of the trio’s apartment. 

Enjolras wanted to stay angry, he really did, but he couldn’t get the couldn’t quite rid his mind of the image of a certain pair green-blue eyes, wholly fixated on his.

  
  



	3. The Devil in the Details

This New Year’s resolution was proving more challenging than Enjolras had imagined. There’s a side to change that’s largely ignored – an entire hidden world full of planning and logistical nightmares. This is an aspect of revolution that is completely devoid of passion, despite its great importance to the success of any cause. And Enjolras hates it.

Enjolras wasn’t made for trivialities, the where and how many and what size font problems. The young man was made for the big picture. Enjolras thrives in the almost violent passion of debate –  rallying around an idea, taking the spirit of it into his soul and becoming the cause. That’s what Enjolras was made for. Not sitting on the floor of his room in the apartment he shares with Combeferre and Courfeyrac, picking absentmindedly at the rapidly fraying carpet as his friends fret over the proper formatting of handouts to bring to their first meeting. Every second brought with it another destroyed thread of carpet, and drained another ounce of passion from Enjolras’s body. 

“You know what I think? I think you’re just lazy, Enj.” Combeferre had somehow inherited all the powers of motherhood, from having eyes in the back of his head, to possessing a superhuman sense of hearing capable of discerning half-sentences grumbled into the pillow Enjolras was pressing to his face.

“Nah, he’s just a drama queen. Look at him, trying to suffocate himself with a pillow – you’ll never cut off your breath supply holding it like that.”

If Enjolras had been any more aware he might have heard the sudden whoosh of air as Courfeyrac lunged across the floor. Exhausted as he was, Enj could only feel a sudden flare of panic shoot through his body as he was pushed to the ground and his ability to breathe was suddenly revoked. There wasn’t room for thought, just unbridled terror as his hands rose and began clawing at the arms that had wrapped the pillow so closely around his face. Thankfully the surprise force – which Enjolras vaguely realized must be Courfeyrac – disappeared as quickly as it had attacked, leaving Enjolras lying on his back panting with the dim sound of laughter ringing in his ears. 

Surprisingly, Enjolras was not always the eloquent leader that people on the fringes of his life expected him to be. Those who don’t know him, or who have only had the displeasure of losing a debate to him – because rest assured they always lose – see the big picture. Passionate Enjolras, an unstoppable blur of red and determination and ideas, an angel of justice topped with a halo of gold. But the devil is in the details. And as he lay on the floor, flushed and breathing heavily, glaring at the two people closest to him, it became even more evident that the details of life are, regrettably, so important.

“Why do I choose to live with you two? I think I secretly want to be suffocated in my sleep.” Enjolras was forced to quickly bat away an eager Courfeyrac, who appeared to be preparing for another lunge with the offending pillow in his hand.

“Come on, you two. I know it’s not exciting but we really need to pound this thing out if we want people to join.” Only mildly exasperated, Combeferre gestured for Enjolras and Courfeyrac to join him over by the wall, where a slightly battered laptop was plugged into the only outlet in the room.

“I think it would help if we found a set meeting place.” Enjolras roused himself enough to contribute. “Courf, do you think you’d be able to book that same conference room you talked about every week?”

Courfeyrac, who had been settling into a comfortable position at Combeferre’s side, suddenly stilled, staring at the floor between himself and Enjolras. Combeferre looked up from the laptop when he felt Courfeyrac tense, and set a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Hey,” Courfeyrac uncharacteristically shrunk back from Ferre’s touch. “Hey, hey, Courf, what’s wrong?”

“I may have forgotten to actually book the conference room.” Courfeyrac seemed to crumple in on himself with enough disappointment in his expression to quench any anger that Enjolras felt. 

Combeferre sighed and hooked his arm around Courfeyrac’s shoulders. “Courf, I think I’ve been putting too much pressure on you. All this talk of pamphlets and Times New Roman versus Comic Sans – I just distracted you, and for that I apologize.”

Courf snorted half-heartedly, and barely cracked a smile when Ferre tugged lightly on one of his curls. “Well hey,” Enjolras interjected, “hasn’t Joly mentioned that Musichetta works at the café that hosts the feminist club meetings?”

Combeferre raised an eyebrow at Enjolras. “You’d be willing to change the future of the world from the corner of a random coffee shop?”

Enjolras shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair, wincing when they caught on a knot left over from Courfeyrac’s pillow attack. “I mean, there’s got to be worse places. And this way we’re in public, where people can hear our message and be inspired.”

“Even though I think the espresso might do more inspiring than we do, I don’t think it’s a bad idea.” Combeferre gave Courfeyrac a small pat on the shoulder before withdrawing his arm and pulling a cell phone from his pocket, offering it to his friend. “Do you want to call Joly, Courf, and see what he can do for us here?”

Courf grabbed the phone and quickly jumped to his feet, rushing off in the direction of the only spot in their apartment that had any service at all. “Yes, I’m on it. Don’t worry, there’s no  Comic Sans to distract me now.”

Combeferre chuckled at Courfeyrac’s retreating figure, watching as he ran for the door, almost colliding with the frame in his haste to fix his earlier lapse in memory. Once Courf had corrected his trajectory and sped off into the distance, Enjolras sighed and slouched against the side of his bed. Ferre turned at the sound of Enjolras’s sigh and shook his head in mock disappointment. “You spend ten minutes on logistics and you’re already too done to keep going.”

“Don’t blame me,” Enjolras laughed. “My job is to change the world, not change the color of text in a pamphlet.”  
“And I suppose that job falls to me?” When Enjolras nodded with a smirk on his face, Combeferre heaved a sigh. “The things I do for you two. Honestly.”

Content with his contributions to the details of their plan, Enjolras attempted to go back to picking at the carpet. Combeferre had a different idea, and instead of picking up the laptop and getting back to work, he stared at Enjolras with an openness that made him uncomfortable. “Do you think  _ he’ll _ be there?”

Enjolras’s heart skipped a beat, and he felt an unexplained flush dust his cheeks. The image of green eyes and matching boxers flashed in his mind, before he thought to ask, “Who?”

“You know, the boy we ran into on our way to get Courf some pants the other day. The one who was carrying his jeans and wearing blue boxers in the middle of the hallway.”

“Green.” Enjolras corrected Combeferre without realizing the word had left his mouth.

Combeferre smiled slyly at Enjolras and leaned forward, tilting his head as he asked, “Green?”

Enjolras’s face was well and truly flushed now, and he had to cough before he was able to splutter out the words, “Green. They were, uh, they were green.”

“Oh,” Combeferre drawled, “Green. I see. The devil is in the details, my friend. I’ll take your word for it. They were green.”


	4. The First Meeting

Enjolras did his best to put the boy with the green boxers out of his mind for the rest of winter break. He focused on preparing stacks of professional and typo-free flyers (“no, for the last time, Courfeyrac, we are  _ not  _ describing our social justice organization in  Comic Sans font!”), putting them up around campus as it slowly filled with students, and making arrangements for the location of their upcoming meeting.

Thankfully Musichetta, the girlfriend of one of Combeferre’s friends from his pre-med classes, had agreed to let them meet in the back room of the Café Musain. All that Enjolras had to do was fill the room –  and Chetta’s tip jar.

For this, Enjolras was exceedingly glad to have Courfeyrac. Unlike Enjolras, whose unbridled passion could often be intimidating, Courfeyrac possessed the uncanny ability to befriend everyone he met, from the neighbors that they saw every day to the occasional half-naked strangers they happened to cross paths with in the stairwell. With him on recruitment duty, Enjolras had no doubt that their first meeting would have enough attendees to justify their efforts, and, hopefully, build a strong foundation for social change. (He did, however, worry that a certain half-naked stranger might not be in attendance – but nobody needed to know that.)

 

* * *

 

Once the day of the meeting arrived, however, Enjolras had a bit of a hard time keeping his worries to himself. He had shown up early to ensure that the room at the Musain was set for their meeting, laying out handouts and rearranging chairs, but every passing minute still heightened his worry that his certain someone might not come.

As Enjolras moved to straighten the stack of handouts for the fifth time in five minutes, the door to the room swung open. Enjolras’s head snapped up, and he was equally disappointed and relieved to see Combeferre and Courfeyrac entering the little back room. 

“Nice, isn’t it?” Courfeyrac chirped, scanning their accommodations with a level of cheer that seemed somewhat inappropriate for their rather mediocre surroundings.

“Certainly better than some stuffy conference room,” Combeferre replied knowingly as he shut the door behind him.

Even if he’d only said as much to assuage Courfeyrac’s guilt for not booking them a room on campus, Enjolras supposed that he was probably right. The Musain was a far better meeting spot than he had expected; it was a small, locally-owned bar and café, far enough from the main campus to stay off the beaten track, but still primarily populated by university students. The front room of the establishment was dominated by a large bar, boasting a menu that served everything from coffee and tea to wine and spirits. Sprawling student-created murals spanned the walls, and strings of fairy lights hung from the low ceiling over the bar, illuminating the dark wood of the counter with a cozy glow. Opposite the bar, groups of students sat clustered around rickety tables, chatting quietly over lattes in the afternoon lull. A balcony jutted over the low-ceilinged bar, accessible from a small staircase near the back of the café. The room that Musichetta had offered for Enjolras’s meeting was up those stairs, past a cozy common area populated by a battered pool table and a few ancient but valiantly resilient arcade games. A worn wooden door at the back corner of the bar’s upper level opened to what appeared to have once been a small, windowless storage area, but was now a small, windowless, fully functional meeting room, filled with a few mismatched tables and chairs and a large, threadbare couch, all of which had likely been sitting unused in the café’s storage room but were now assembled to serve a greater purpose: To provide seating for the members of a hastily formed and generally unprepared college club.

“Yeah, I think I like it,” Enjolras mused, scanning the exposed brick walls of their little room with an appraising eye. “It has a better feel than a conference room. It’s not like anyone’s preaching from the head of a table in here; we’re all seated as equals. And besides, it’s always nice to support local businesse- oh, hello!”

Enjolras’s ruminations were interrupted as the door creaked open to reveal Joly, followed shortly by Musichetta and a boy Enjolras hadn’t seen before. Enjolras scarcely had time to finish his greeting before the new boy tripped over the threshold of the room, narrowly avoiding sending Enjolras’s painstakingly stacked handouts flying by steadying himself on Musichetta’s shoulders. 

“Hi,” the boy said sheepishly once he’d righted himself, extending a hand for Enjolras to shake. “I’m Bossuet.”

The room slowly began to fill with people as the time of the meeting drew nearer. Entering after Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta was a tall, gangly boy who looked only vaguely familiar to Enjolras but whose entrance drew a screech of delight from Courfeyrac, who sprung up to wrap him in a hug. Combeferre, looking miffed, turned his attention to welcoming the pair of girls who trailed in next. 

Each time Enjolras heard the door’s hinges creak he glanced up despite himself, and each time he couldn’t help being a little disappointed when he didn’t see wild curls and green eyes. He gave himself a mental shake, forcing himself to keep a terse smile firmly in place. The fact that so many people were interested in their organization was a  _ good  _ thing, and Enjolras had absolutely no right to feel disappointed. 

It wasn’t until Combeferre cleared his throat expectantly that Enjolras realized he’d been staring at the door for what was probably too long. It was already five minutes past the scheduled start of the meeting, and the pleasant chatter in the room had died down, replaced with anticipation. Enjolras reluctantly cleared his throat, spared one last glance for the stubbornly closed door, and began the meeting.

“Well, um, hi, everyone,” he began, somewhat distractedly. “Welcome to the first meeting of our new organization! My roommates and I – ” Enjolras gestured quickly to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, who waved sheepishly at the other attendees “ – wanted to create a group that could make a change at this school. We know that, as students, our voices are often downplayed, or not even heard. Here, we want to create an inclusive environment in which everyone has a voice, and we hope that we can eventually transform our campus into such an environment. Hopefully, with enough dedication, we can someday do the same for our city, for our country, for the world.” Enjolras paused for what he hoped was effect, scanning the room to try to ascertain the climate. Most people seemed agreeable, smiling encouragingly at his propositions.

“So,” Enjolras continued, smiling at the relatively positive response. “In the spirit of these ideas, I was hoping to open the floor and ask  _ you  _ what – ” As Enjolras spoke, the door to the storage room burst open once more. Before he even turned his head to look, a sudden surge of butterflies in Enjolras’s stomach predicted exactly what he was about to see; it was the boy from the stairwell on New Year’s Day. 

This time, the boy had tamed his unruly curls with a beanie (green, Enjolras noted – like his hoodie, like his eyes, like his…) His outfit was now, regrettably, accompanied by pants, but it was, unmistakably, him. 

Once again, Enjolras found himself lost for words, earning him a sarcastically raised eyebrow from underneath the boy’s dark bangs.

“Sorry I’m late,” he announced, sounding a lot like someone who was not sorry in the slightest. He held out a rumpled flyer from Courfeyrac’s first batch, one bearing a font that looked suspiciously like  Comic Sans . “Though considering that the only information under ‘Directions’ on this flyer is a clipart of a unicorn instructing me to ‘follow my dreams,’ it’s probably a good thing that I made it here at all.” Enjolras narrowed his eyes at Courfeyrac, who at least had the decency to look ashamed.

“Well we’re certainly glad you could make it…”

“Grantaire.”

“Grantaire. We’re glad you could make it, Grantaire. Anyway, we were just discussing some of the objectives of our club this semester. In order to make sure that everyone has a voice, I was hoping to hear some of our members talk about the issues that are important to them, so that, as a group, we can work to make changes for the better – first on our campus, and next in the world.” Enjolras finished a bit more dramatically than he had when he’d previously addressed the group and looked to Grantaire, half expecting to see the same expression of mild awe that the others had shown him. Instead, he was faced with yet another sceptical eyebrow raise, and a smile that, rather than being encouraging, was almost mocking. Enjolras felt the butterflies that had been churning in his stomach fall still.

“The  _ world _ ,” Grantaire sneered. “You’re really going to sit in here in this tiny room, with this tiny group, and tell me that you’re going to change the  _ world. _ ” Enjolras felt his face flush.

“Well we’re at least going to  _ try. _ Don’t tell me there aren’t injustices in the world that you’d like to see corrected.”

“I mean, of course there are wrongs out there that ought to be made right. But to say that  _ we’re  _ the ones who can fix them – isn’t that a bit presumptuous? I mean, there are, what? Twelve of us? Thirteen? I really don’t see how this many university students can make a lasting impact on anything other than the keg at a frat party.”

“Well, being doubtful is no excuse not to try,” Enjolras snapped hotly. He was aware that everyone in the room was staring at the two of them with unease, but he was too frustrated to care. Enjolras had never been one to back down from a fight, and he wasn’t about to start now. “If you’re really so pessimistic about this, why are you even here?”

Grantaire’s face remained unreadable. He simply smirked, giving no indication that Enjolras’s impassioned words had affected him in the slightest. 

“That whole ‘everyone-has-a-voice’ bullshit didn’t last long, did it?” he quipped. Enjolras was sure that the comment would have tinged his ears red if they hadn’t already been burning scarlet. “No matter. As enamored as I am with you, Goldilocks, this  _ is  _ a public establishment, and I’m here for the drinks, not for you. Now, if you’ll please excuse me.” Grantaire turned on his heel and marched out of the room.


	5. The World At His Feet

Despite the unfortunate events at the start of the meeting, Enjolras was able to regain the attention of the attendees and stir their hearts with success. He may have pounded the table a little harder than usual, and his words may have been more fierce and aggressive than necessary, but even if this were so, it wouldn’t have been important. Every face in the room carried a degree of awe, every torso sat a little straighter, and every eye shone with the reflection of Enjolras’s vigorous determination. All in all the meeting was a rousing success, and when Enjolras ended his impassioned speech and yielded the floor to Combeferre and Courfeyrac to share their thoughts and provide (hopefully accurate) details regarding further events, Enjolras finally felt a sliver of peace. He had worried that the churning, boiling passion that made up the contents of his heart would never quiet, that he was destined to forever be a walking bundle of violent emotions, always chasing after change that was out of his reach. 

Now, though, he wasn’t alone. Some people, Enjolras could come up with at least one, don’t see the difference – they argue that twenty people can hardly make more of an impact than one. Enjolras has always known better, and it’s always seemed so simple: Twenty people are capable of carrying a burden twenty times the weight an individual could bear. Even though he was a remarkable individual, this piece of logic still applied to Enjolras; as much as he was loathe to admit it, there was a limit to the amount of change he could affect on his own. But in the back of this bar, Enjolras had finally found a group of people willing to bear the burden of progress on its shoulders, and together they could begin to lift the world to a better state of being. His heart was at peace in that moment, as Courfeyrac dismissed everyone and people began shuffling towards the door and out into the main portion of the bar, their excitable chatter echoing down the hall like music to Enjolras’s ears.

“Well, I’d say that went well.” Combeferre’s voice broke into Enjolras’s reverie, pulling him back into the present.

“Definitely! A lot of people said they’d be back. We’re actually doing it.” Courfeyrac was grinning excitedly as he gathered up papers and pushed in chairs – Joly had threatened to execute all three of them if they left a huge mess for Musichetta to clean up. 

“I think you definitely got to them, Enjolras.” Combeferre grinned slyly and continued, “You did seem a  _ little _ on edge though.”

“I wonder why,” Courf snorted. “Mr. Green Eyes tried to rip out his heart and stomp on it.”

Enjolras scoffed and stood up, his chair squeaking uncomfortably across the floor.  “Please. You know me – opposition is fuel for the fire that dwells in my spirit.”

Ferre and Courf both laughed, and Combeferre quipped, “You don’t have to be so fussy and pretentious, Enj, the meeting is over. You’ve already inspired as many people as you’re going to tonight.”

“And hey,” Courf added, “it’s okay to be disappointed with the way it turned out with him today, he was kind of an asshole.”

“I wasn’t disappointed. Why would I be? But he was an ass, definitely.”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac sighed and shared a pointed look, before joining Enjolras in making their way towards the door. They walked through the noisy building, two of them in calm silence and one in the throes of a fit of petulance, until a solid warmth crashed into Enjolras’s side and sent him sprawling to the floor.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going you…” The voice stopped mid-insult, and Enjolras looked up from where he was sitting on the scuffed up wooden floorboards.

Looking down at him was none other than Mr. Green Eyes himself. Grantaire looked flushed, with a slight pink dusting his nose and cheeks, and his hair was a haphazard shock of black around his pale face. His lips parted and his dull green eyes widened in an expression of surprise, staring down at Enjolras as if he were something completely out of place and inexplicable. The curious expression was gone in an instant, replaced by a crooked smirk. “Goldilocks,” Grantaire’s mouth slipped and slid all over the word, belying how he had been spending his evening. “Fancy seeing you here, mister.”

Enjolras ripped his eyes away from the large, pale hand extended towards him and pushed himself up off the floor. “Don’t call me Goldilocks.”

Grantaire let his hand slowly drop to his side when Enjolras stood, watching him with the same smirk on his face...Enjolras couldn’t tell whether it was malicious or just amused. Casting his eyes about, he was just in time to see Courfeyrac pull Combeferre out the front doors of the bar by the wrist. Damn. He returned his eyes to Grantaire, who hadn’t changed position but seemed to be swaying ever so slightly in place. “If I can’t call you Goldilocks then what should I call you.”

The question took Enjolras by surprise, so he simply blurted rather loudly, “My name is Enjolras!”

Grantaire’s smirk shifted into something closer to a genuine smile as he repeated, “Enjolras,” his drunken tongue tripping over the r. “I’ll call you Apollo, Enjolras.”

“A-Apollo?” Enjolras stuttered. “Why in the world would you feel the need to call me that?”

“Because,” Grantaire’s fingers twitched and he lifted his arm, as if to reach out for something, but he thought better of his plan and let his arm drop to his side once more. “Change the world yet, Apollo?”

Enjolras bristled in aggravation. “My name is Enjolras, and change cannot be wrought in a single night. It’s going to take some serious planning and work, things I’m sure you know nothing of, but I will change the world.”

Grantaire sniggered and his grin widened. “Oh Apollo, you’re going to be so disappointed. People don’t always turn out how you want them to be, do they?”

Enjolras had a flashback to a cold morning, and a boy in green boxers standing in the stairwell. “No, they don’t. Not always. But that’s why I’m going to take advantage of the help I’ve been offered by the people who turned out  _ better  _ than I expected. And it’ll work.”

“It will.” Grantaire stated, with a sarcastic twist to his mouth and one eyebrow upraised. 

“It will.” Enjolras affirmed. “You’ll see.”

Grantaire let out a loud laugh, his head tilting back and exposing the full length of his neck. When he stopped, he took a spluttering breath and simply shrugged at the look of righteous anger on Enjolras’s face. “Good luck getting the whole fucking world to lay down at your feet, Apollo.”

Before Enjolras could argue further, Grantaire had slipped away into a crowd of people with an agility incongruous to his drunken state, leaving Enj staring at the spot where he had been, his newfound peace replaced with a burning indignation.


	6. The Visitor

“Enj. Enj. _Enjolras._ ”

“Huh? What?” Enjolras blinked and shook his head. Now that classes had resumed for the spring semester, Enjolras found himself swamped with work in all of his PoliSci classes. He had agreed to come to the library to study with Courfeyrac and Combeferre, but he couldn’t seem to stay focused on anything related to school. His mind kept circling back to the meeting—the plans that they had already made, and the ones that they hoped to outline next week. Despite one somewhat notable exception, everyone in attendance at the meeting had seemed remarkably receptive to Enjolras’s ideas and excited to enact some real change. Resolving to put the argument with Grantaire out of his mind, Enjolras vowed to pour his energy into the members of his group that _did_ care about his cause—even if that meant deviating his focus from some of his more pressing responsibilities, like listening to Courfeyrac.

“I _said,_ ” Courfeyrac was explaining, with all of the strained patience that one would show an ornery toddler, “I invited some more people to come study with us, if that’s okay with you.”

“What? Yeah, sure, that’s fine…” Enjolras replied distractedly, already slipping away from the conversation at hand and into his thoughts.

Evidently, by “some more people,” Courfeyrac meant a small army of people, including Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta, as well as the tall, somewhat awkward boy that had attended Enjolras’s first meeting, who introduced himself as Marius.

“Right. Marius, hi,” Enjolras muttered over his laptop screen as the boy sat down. He noticed as he did so that Combeferre was pointedly ignoring the new arrival, turning a page in his biology textbook with unwarranted ferocity. He was stopped from considering this for long, though, as Joly flopped down next to Combeferre and pulled an identical textbook from his bag. Bossuet, in the meantime, dropped into a chair next to Enjolras, leaning one band-aid-covered elbow on the table and fixing his eyes on Enjolras expectantly.

“Uh… hi?” Enjolras started, once the staring had gone on too long for him to simply focus on his laptop and politely ignore it.

“Crazy first meeting, huh?” Bossuet said in lieu of a greeting. “I’m Bossuet, by the way, in case you didn’t know.”

“No, yeah, I know you. You’re always with Joly and ‘Chetta, right?”

Bossuet simply offered a shrug in reply. “Yeah, I suppose. I’m also, y’know, _with_ Joly and ‘Chetta, so that would make sense.”

Enjolras felt the tips of his ears going pink. He really didn’t like to think of himself as an unobservant person, but he acknowledged that he was often too wrapped up in his work and his ideas to recognize feelings, whether they be his own or anyone else’s.

“Sorry, I didn’t–”

“It’s all good,” Bossuet interjected, waving Enjolras off. “Anyway, I’m glad I joined them at your club meeting last week– I would’ve hated to miss _that_. What did you think?”

“Well, I think, as a whole, things went really well. We’ll just have to continue organizing and-”

“No, no, not about that. I’m glad to hear that things are going well, but I really want to know what you think about, you know…” Bossuet paused expectantly, but Enjolras simply cocked his head, confused. “ _Grantaire._ What did you think about Grantaire?”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras muttered to himself, the word conjuring memories of green eyes and flushed cheeks, infuriating smirks and slurred syllables. “Wait– do you know him?”

“He’s a friend,” Bossuet replied coolly.

“Well, he’s insufferable,” Enjolras blurted. He was aware that the comment was probably out of line, but his anger about their argument had returned in full force now that he had been reminded of it.

“Come on, he’s not so bad,” Bossuet chided, but Enjolras cut him off.

“He literally came into my meeting just to tell me that everything I was trying to do was futile and pointless. _How_ is that ‘not so bad’?”

“That’s just Grantaire,” Bossuet sighed, waving a hand dismissively. “He’s not really a bad guy. I think he just wants attention, and making a scene is a pretty surefire way of getting it.”

“Well, maybe he should try _actually contributing_ to something, rather than just being a distraction,” Enjolras snapped. Bossuet held his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying– give him a chance, okay?”

Enjolras was saved from replying when an argument that had evidently been taking place on the other side of the table reached a fever pitch.

“Yes, Marius, healthcare, contrary to what the current American government might believe, is a _human right._ ” Combeferre was livid, and Marius looked close to tears. Always ready to discuss the issues he cared about, Enjolras, ignoring Courfeyrac’s half-hearted attempts to diffuse the tension, leapt to Combeferre’s defense. And no, he did not even _briefly_ imagine that he was driving his point home, not to Marius, but instead to a certain green-eyed cynic, successfully wiping that self-righteous smirk off his face.

 

* * *

 

Maruis seemed to have become a fixture in Courfeyrac’s portion of the apartment, much to Combeferre’s annoyance and Enjolras’s sadistic delight. You see, even after being berated to the point of tears barely a week earlier, Marius remained a seemingly endless well of passionate, sincere, and (in Enjolras’s mind at least) completely false ideas. Enjolras took great joy in allowing Courf’s new friend to expound excitedly upon his ideals and beliefs, and he took an even greater joy in watching the boy’s expression of ardent fervor crumble as Enjolras shot hole after hole into his arguments.

And so that’s why, while Combeferre skulked and snapped whenever Courf mentioned Marius coming over again, Enjolras just smiled and bid the time between this lovely piece of news and their visitor’s arrival in peaceful contemplation. At least, it seemed peaceful on the surface.

Today Enjolras sat at the kitchen table reading for pleasure, rather than holed up in his room, feverishly making plans for his fledgling political organization. Courfeyrac accused him of ‘lying in wait for my poor innocent Marius, Lord knows that boy has had enough of being violently destroyed by you and Ferre,’ but Enjolras preferred to think about the _good_ he was doing for Marius Pontmercy. Enjolras admired the fervor which Marius was capable of displaying, despite his usual aggression towards the boy, and held a sincere desire to see his opinions grow and develop into – well, the right ones. Knowing that this process could take months, even years, only served to delight Enjolras more, and to throw even more passion into deconstructing the young man’s ill-placed beliefs. After all, Enjolras was a leader at heart. His tendency to push Marius to the brink of tears aside, he really did care about convincing him of the right way to go through life. Really, he did.

“Marius, what’s wrong today?” Enjolras sat up straighter when he heard Courf’s voice approaching, along with two sets of footsteps.

A few moments later, Courf and Marius entered through the kitchen door. Enjolras remained seated, staring at his book, waiting to assess their conversation and jump in when Marius’s ideas became too ridiculous. Usually the two friends’ conversation was already in full swing, but today they were eerily quiet. Courfeyrac spoke up again, his voice tinged with worry. “Maruis. What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost – what the hell happened.”

Combeferre slunk out of his hidden place in the pantry, most likely lured by the thought of Marius already being upset without him having to put in any work. “Wow, Marius. Courf is right. What’s up?”

Now Enjolras was intrigued. When he layed eyes on Marius he understood what Ferre and Courf were talking about. Marius, usually bright-eyed and smiling (well, before Enjolras and Combeferre got to him at least), was pale-faced, bearing a small frown and staring at a point on the wall as if he were seeing something else entirely. The three roommates stared worriedly at Maruis, waiting for him to respond. All of them were silent for almost a minute, before Marius suddenly locked eyes with Enjolras and spoke in such a serious tone that Enj wondered if he were dreaming. “Enjolras. I want to invite the campus feminism club to collaborate with us.”

Enjolras was shocked, as were Courf and Ferre. The three young men looked at Marius with wide eyes, surprised at this sudden announcement. Enjolras was puzzled as to why Marius, who still didn’t share many of the core beliefs of their new organization, would suddenly have an idea so supportive and, though he was loathe to admit it, helpful. It was Courf who finally picked his jaw up off the floor to respond. “Well, that sounds like a great idea, Marius. Enj?”

Enjolras blinked and nodded slowly. “Yes...yes, I think that would be, appropriate. I’m sure we could find some common ground and plan an event or a rally together.”

Marius’ whole being changed as soon as Enjolras stopped speaking; the somber air that had been making his head droop lifted and his usual innocent and perpetually abashed smile returned. “Thank you, I’ll take care of everything.” Deaf to Courfeyrac’s confused exclamations, Marius turned and immediately rushed out of the kitchen and the apartment.

“Well. That was strange.” Combeferre quickly rushed to fill the space Marius had been taking up at Courfeyrac’s side. “Do you need anything to eat, Courf? I’m about to make some pasta, if you want some.”

Courf shook his head and brushed past Combeferre and out the door. “Sorry Ferre, I need to catch up with Marius. This is too weird, maybe he’s high or something.”

Combeferre stood in the doorway to the kitchen, scowling in the direction that Marius and Courfeyrac had taken. Enjolras, completely unaware of the waves of irritation rolling off of Ferre, snapped his book shut and sighed heavily, before plopping onto his feet and shuffling dejectedly over to their pitifully stocked fridge. He swung the door open and slouched against the side of the fridge, groaning in frustration when he didn’t see anything other than a half empty gallon of milk and a few assorted fruits and vegetables.

“Oh quit being such a drama queen, Enjolras.” Combeferre snapped in a tone of voice usually reserved for trouble making toddlers, causing Enj to jump with surprise and look over his shoulder at his now fuming friend. “Don’t look so shocked. You’re just shuffling around and sighing and shit because you didn’t get your chance to make some poor simple kid cry today.”

With that Combeferre blew past Enjolras and up the stairs leading to his room, leaving Enjolras standing alone in the kitchen just as confused as he had been only a few minutes earlier when Marius had made his unbidden, odd request. Enjolras was prevented from dwelling on Ferre’s strange behaviour by a sudden violent rumbling in his stomach. Even as he wondered whether Combeferre was still planning on making pasta, a resounding crash echoed throughout the apartment. Rather than go and investigate upstairs, or put effort into creating an actual meal, Enjolras simply grabbed the half of an avocado that had mysteriously appeared in their fridge four days earlier and quickly retreated to his room. It wasn’t that Enjolras wasn’t concerned about his friend, he simply knew by the uncharacteristically aggressive words and rather violent banging sounds coming from upstairs that Combeferre wasn’t in a place to talk. Usually when Ferre was angry, he would be quiet and withdrawn, almost passive aggressive, waiting for the offending parties to come to him. Today something was obviously different, and the only explanation Enjolras could think of was that Combeferre himself didn’t understand why he was upset, and needed time to vent his anger before he could explain it. It might seem a little odd, but Enjolras understood the feeling – when your mind is running so fast that it makes you react before you even know what you’re reacting to, it can be difficult to understand what’s happening in your own head.

Despite all that, Enjolras did intend to go upstairs and confront his friend, just as soon as the slightly terrifying thumping noises ceased. However, he never got the chance. After about a half hour, just enough time for Enjolras to finish his avocado and ponder over how many objects Combeferre had in his room to throw, he heard the distant sound of the front door opening and someone, Courfeyrac, calling Ferre’s name. The pounding silenced, leaving only the sound of footsteps ascending the staircase into Combeferre’s territory. A door was opened and then shut again, and that was the last sound Enj heard for a while.

 


	7. The Concert

In the week following the drama of Marius’s latest visit,  Enjolras scarcely saw his roommates. Although the trio had always tended to go on outings together, Enjolras now found himself alone in a suspiciously quiet apartment more often than not, poring over his books without the familiar background noises of Combeferre’s nature documentaries and Courfeyrac’s less-than-quiet telephone conversations. At first, it had seemed like a pleasant change of routine, allowing Enjolras to read and write in peace, but he found the sudden silence almost distracting. It was strangely lonely, existing separately from the familiar lives of his best friends.

Enjolras quickly pushed such thoughts out of his mind. He didn’t have time to be lonely; after all, the revolution wouldn’t run itself.

 

* * *

 

Said revolution was quickly taking shape on the pages of Enjolras’s notebooks, and in the conversations of people in the little back room of Musain as the time of their second meeting neared. The room was abuzz with excitement over the upcoming collaboration with the campus feminism club, marking the first real crusade for Enjolras’s unnamed club and its members.

Enjolras had, against his better judgement but at Courfeyrac’s insistence, assigned Marius the responsibility of convincing the members of the feminism club to attend their next meeting. This had been a constant source of stress for Enjolras over the past week, but he was relieved to enter the room before the meeting was scheduled to start and find a trio of people already perched on the old couch at the back of the meeting room, chatting in low voices. As soon as Enjolras entered, the girl sitting in the middle looked up and smiled brightly.

“Hi, you must be Enjolras,” she chirped, standing up to shake his hand. She was tiny, barely reaching Enjolras’s shoulder, and had blonde hair tied in a ponytail atop her head. Despite her small stature, there was a glint in her eyes that let Enjolras know that she was not to be crossed. “I’m Cosette, the president of the feminism club, and these are a few of my officers.”

“Eponine,” a tall, dark-haired girl introduced herself bluntly, offering Enjolras a half-smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“And I’m Jehan,” a person with a freckled nose and and a long orange braid said serenely, grasping Enjolras’s hand rather than shaking it.

Enjolras nodded gratefully at the newcomers, then turned to address Cosette.

“So Marius was able to get in touch with you and tell you what we’re all about?” Cosette merely cocked her head confusedly in response.

“Nah, he got in touch with me,” Eponine piped up, examining the chipped black polish on her nails as if she were unconcerned about the whole affair.” He and I are friends. I just passed on the message.” Enjolras didn’t have time to be confused, as Marius himself chose that precise moment to enter the room. The boy in question foreswore a greeting and instead simply stared at Cosette, turning very red as the silence following his entrance became more and more palpable.

“Earth to Marius?” Eponine finally ventured, waving a hand theatrically in front of Marius’s face.

“Right, sorry,” he stammered. “Hi, uh… hi, guys.” Not quite looking Cosette in the eyes, he turned and rushed to sit down in the corner.

Despite the fact that it began somewhat awkwardly, as events involving Marius tended to, the meeting itself actually went well. Cosette made some engaging remarks about women’s issues on campus, and encouraged people to heighten their involvement and awareness. Not only were her words well-received, but the meeting itself was well-attended, bolstering Enjolras’s hopes for the organization’s future. Strangely, the meeting was so well-attended that, as Cosette had been talking, Enjolras had glimpsed a familiar head of dark, curly hair among those listening. He forced himself not to even look in that direction and instead stared at Cosette with almost unwarranted intensity. After the meeting, however, as people milled about and conversations shifted from social justice to the everyday topics of school and work, curiosity got the better of him. He stood to investigate the identity of the curly-haired person that he’d seen out of the corner of his eye, but barely made it two steps before he was stopped by a wildly panicking Marius.

“Enjolras, you have to help me,” Marius hissed, as Enjolras tried desperately to peer over his shoulder and locate the boy who might just be Grantaire.

“With what, the PoliSci paper? Marius, I don’t really think this is the best –”

“No, not with the paper!” Marius cried, grabbing Enjolras by the shoulders and giving him a shake. Enjolras stiffened, fixing Marius with his trademark withering stare until he slowly removed his hands. “Not with the paper.” Marius continued in a whisper, “With a _girl._ ”

Enjolras was dumbfounded.

“With – with _what_ ? Are you serious? I do _not_ have time for this.” Enjolras shoved past Marius, for a moment forgetting his objective out of the sheer frustration of being interrupted for such a trivial thing as a crush. “Your grade in Constitutional Principles should matter more to you than your love life, and even _that_ is less important than what we’re trying to do here!”

“But I love her!” Marius cried at Enjolras’s retreating figure.

“So tell her!”

“But I don’t even know her _name_!”

For the sake of Marius, and of everyone in the immediate vicinity, Enjolras pretended not to hear that part.

As Enjolras approached the back of the person who might be Grantaire, it occurred to him that he had no idea what he was doing, or why. In the absence of his usual driving sense of purpose, he simply stood awkwardly behind Grantaire, who was thoroughly absorbed in conversation with another boy, the one who had introduced himself at the first meeting as Bahorel. He was frozen in indecision until the person in front of him finally turned around, colliding with Enjolras head-on.

“Sorry, I – oh. It’s you.” Grantaire’s initial apologetic expression morphed into something far more smug and distant as soon as he recognized Enjolras’s face. “You should really watch where you’re going.”

Enjolras wanted to point out that Grantaire had, in fact, run into _him,_ but his tongue couldn’t seem to form the words.

“So. Did you need something?” Grantaire was studying Enjolras’s face carefully, with a hint of apprehension in his eyes. “Seeing as you, y’know, ran into _me_ and all.”

“No, I was just wondering why you were here. Seeing as you, y’know, made it very clear that you have no interest in what we’re doing here, and all.”

Something sparked in Grantaire’s eyes at Enjolras’s mocking tone.

“Perhaps, O Fearless Apollo,” he said through his trademark smirk, “that’s not why I ever came here in the first place.”

“Well what else were you expecting? It said very clearly on the flyer that – ”

“How do you feel about music?” Grantaire cut in.

“About – what?”

“Music. You know, where people sing and play instruments to – ”

“I know what music is,” Enjolras interjected, annoyed. It seemed impossible to carry a linear conversation with Grantaire without arguing about something.

“Great. Well, my friend Eponine plays in a band, and Bahorel and I were just talking about getting some people together to go see her play next week. Would you want to come? Seems like you need it, with how uptight you are and all. I’m pretty sure one day that vein in your forehead is actually going to explode if you don’t learn to chill.”

“I don’t go to concerts,” Enjolras blurted automatically, self-consciously brushing a hand across his forehead.

“Oh. Well, that explains, a lot, to be honest.” Grantaire’s smirk was back, but with far less gleeful spite. “Think about it?”

Enjolras was saved from answering when Courfeyrac called his name from behind. By the time he turned back around, Grantaire had disappeared into the throngs of people leaving the room, leaving Enjolras with a nervous pit in his stomach and far more questions than answers.


	8. The Tight Pants

Enjolras was panicking. After spending the course of an entire morning, and most of an afternoon, debating whether or not he should take up Grantaire’s invitation, he had slipped into some comfortable grey sweats and running shoes and attempted to leave the house. Unfortunately, even his lackluster clothing wasn’t enough to get him through the kitchen without being noticed by Combeferre.

“Where do you think you’re going, mister?” Ferre asked from his place at the kitchen counter; his voice was a mixture of genuine surprise at finding Enjolras outside the confines of his room on a Friday night, and a teasing nod to his position as ‘mother’ of the apartment.

Enjolras jumped at the sound of Ferre’s voice, even though he had expected as much, and glanced guiltily over his shoulder. “Going to a concert.” Enjolras muttered the words, trying his best not to look Ferre in the eye, and attempted to quickly make his escape through the kitchen door.

“Watch it, Enj!”

Sometimes Enjolras thinks the world is determined to make him more uncomfortable than any human being has ever been. Courfeyrac was standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a surprised look on his face, which Enjolras could see very well, by the way, because he was about two inches from it, blocking Enjolras’s only means of escape.

“Courfeyrac,” Combeferre intoned with a sweetness which made Enjolras a little frightened, “Enj is going to a _concert!”_

“A concert?” Courfeyrac appeared confused for a moment, before his whole face lit up with a smile that turned Enjolras’s fear into full blown terror. “Oh. A _concert._ The concert that Granatire was inviting everybody to last week?”

Enjolras sighed and nodded, much to the glee of his two roommates. After a brief moment Courfeyrac launched himself at Enjolras with a joyful screech, and the young man – small and excitable as he was – made every effort to pick Enj up and spin him in a circle. He only managed to throw Enjolras off balance a little, but that didn’t seem to dampen his enthusiasm. Combeferre merely clapped a hand on Enjolras’s back and smiled kindly. “So, you accepted Grantaire’s invitation? You’re going together?”

If he had felt any affection at his friends’ reactions, those feelings were quickly replaced with confusion. “Going together? No, no. He just invited me. He invited a lot of people.”

He was suddenly released, accompanied by a chorus of loud groans. “Ferre this is torture. Fix them, both of them.”

“What was that, Courf?” Enjolras completely missed Courfeyrac’s pained plea as head was still buzzing with the thoughts that the words ‘going together’ had stirred up. Going together. Going together as what, friends? He wasn’t friends with Grantaire. Well then what was he? He didn’t hate him, he was pretty sure. He was irritated by him, he was absolutely sure of that. Were they friends? What other option was there?

“Um, Enj.” His train of thought was brought to a screeching halt when Courfeyrac interrupted, with a new look on his face, somewhere in between shock and disgust, leaning more towards disgust. “Is _that_ what you’re wearing.”

Enjolras shrunk back slightly, subconsciously edging towards the doorway. “...Yes. These are my new shoes.”

Courfeyrac let out a sound similar to what Enjolras imagined a furious turtle might sound like, if a turtle actually had the vocal cords to make any significant amount of sound. And Enjolras chose to ignore the fact that he somehow knew that turtles don’t have vocal cords for the moment, because there were more pressing matters than an intervention into Combeferre’s nature documentary addiction. “Enj. Enj. Enjolras. Enjolras no. Just fix him, Combeferre,” the last part was a petulant whine directed at their friend who was currently watching the exchange with a raised eyebrow and small smile.

“I can’t fix him, but maybe you can at least get him ready for this concert. Because he’s not leaving in that.”

That settled it. Enjolras was going to kill Combeferre.

 

* * *

 

 Maybe he wasn’t going to kill Combeferre. The three of them – God forgive Enjolras for ever thinking they would leave him in peace – were currently walking across campus in the direction of the concert. “Why are we walking. Why can’t we get a car.” Courf was clinging to Combeferre’s arm and whining like a child.

“Because,” Enjolras cut in before Combeferre could respond, “personal automobiles are a product of the self-centered capitalist nature of this country, and we will not contribute to it.”

“Well then why can’t we take the bus?”

“Because we’re broke.” Combeferre deadpanned, earning a laugh from both of his friends.

Enjolras fell a half a step behind his two friends, who seemed more clingy than usual lately. He glanced down at his shoes, a pair of shiny black boots that Combeferre had let him borrow, and he smiled. Even though he had protested as Courfeyrac had raided his own closet for something for Enjolras to wear; Enjolras never wanted to appear as though he were taking advantage of the situation of the world (or as he usually said, appear as a filthy bourgeois pig); Enjolras had to admit that Courf had done a good job. He had stripped Enjolras of his sweatshirt and wrapped him in a dark red v-neck, which was a little tighter on Enj than his small friend. Thankfully Courf didn’t manhandle him into the pants, which hugged him twice as much as the shirt. Courfeyrac called them his ‘magical tight pants,’ and if they were tight on Courfeyrac you can bet that they were _sinful_ on Enjolras. So maybe he wouldn’t kill Combeferre for throwing him at Courf’s feet like a doll waiting to be played with, because even though he felt guilty about the amount of money the clothes must have cost, and he didn’t know if they were made under ethical conditions, he had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and he looked damned good. Considering Enjolras only had two settings; fearless leader and homebody student; each of which have their own very limited and specific wardrobe, it felt very different to be heading to a concert dressed for the simple purpose of looking good, and Enjolras appreciated it. He felt attractive. For the moment the world wasn’t falling apart at the seams, there was nothing for him to fix. It felt good.

By the time Enjolras had finished examining this new feeling in his mind, they had arrived. The place was packed, and Enj wasn’t sure if it was because Eponine’s band was already popular or if this was just the usual crowd. Part of him wanted to search for a head of curly black hair and some bright green eyes, but he stopped himself. If Grantaire wanted to talk to him, whether to tear down his dearly held beliefs or extend another confusing invitation, he could find him.

Apparently Grantaire did want to talk to him, because not even a minute after the trio walked through the door Grantaire appeared in front of them. He was in a dark blue shirt and dark jacket, wearing jeans like Enjolras, but every item of clothing on his body seemed to hang off of his frame just a little bit. Under the dim lights the paleness of his skin was less prominent, and it might have just been because of the contents of the glass in his hand, but Enjolras thought he could actually see a bit of a pink tinge across his cheekbones. Grantaire had stopped directly in front of Enjolras, ignoring Combeferre and Courfeyrac in favor of unleashing a lopsided grin at the blonde. “Hey Apollo.” His words had a mild slur, like his mouth was a few steps behind his brain at the moment.

Enjolras nodded his head in greeting, some of his hair – which Courf had insisted he leave completely untied – falling over his right shoulder at the movement. Grantaire’s eyes, which somehow seemed brighter than usual, widened at the movement and focused on Enjolras’s hair. Nobody spoke, and Grantaire simply shifted his gaze from Enjolras’s hair to his face, staring with an intensity completely incongruous with his intoxicated state. Enjolras could only hold his gaze for a moment before he coughed and awkwardly dropped his head, which seemed to shake Grantaire back to attention. “Apollo.” Grantaire raised his hand and casually flicked a piece of Enjolras’s hair back over his shoulder. “Dance with me.”

Enjolras felt his entire face flush, and when he searched his mind for a response to this ridiculously impossible statement, it came up blank. “Dance?”

“Dance,” Grantaire drawled. “We’re at a concert. Dance with me.”

Enjolras didn’t have time to blink before two pairs of hands shoved him a step closer to Grantaire, so close he could smell the alcohol on his breath along with something else – mint, maybe? – that seemed to ripple off of him.

Oftentimes, when Enjolras was surprised or trying to figure out what to do, he seemed to retreat into himself. His thoughts would be rushing so rapidly through his mind that he became completely distracted from the world continuing on around him. When Grantaire wrapped his surprisingly warm hand around Enjolras’s arm and began pulling him to the portion of the floor where people were doing the best imitation of dancing that was possible in such a cramped space, Enjolras retreated. Not physically, Grantaire was still tugging him along with a smile and gentleness that made Enjolras’s face flush, but he retreated mentally. Trying to figure out what he should do in this situation was impossible because he wasn’t even sure what this situation was – this boy with green eyes that seemed to be sparkling as he turned to face Enjolras on the dancefloor had been a terror. The boy whose warm fingers slid down Enjolras’s arms to lightly grasp his hands, as if afraid of spooking him away, had done nothing but criticize and berate Enjolras for his political views, doing his level best to undermine the efforts of his precious fledgling organization. The boy who started swaying side to side, trying to coax Enjolras into moving with him, was usually drunk and rude and belligerent. That same boy was now looking at Enjolras with an expression akin to contentment, and taking one more step into Enjolras’s space, so close that Enj could count the number of lashes over his eyes.

The confusion in Enjolras’s mind was overrun by the burning in his chest when Grantaire moved his hands to Enjolras’s hips, grinning sheepishly and pulling him even closer. Enjolras placed his hands stiffly on Grantaire’s elbows, trying to keep some semblance of distance between the two. Nothing came of his efforts, as every movement made certain that Enjolras could feel a different part of him brush against Grantaire. “Why are you doing this,” the words spilled out of Enjolras’s lips, and he felt a sudden inexplicable splash of guilt when Grantaire’s almost magical smile faltered slightly.

Grantaire immediately recovered, letting a garish grin slip onto his face. “Doing what, Apollo? Dancing?”

“Being so, well,” so what? Gentle? Charming? “Being so nice. You hate me.”

Grantaire stopped swaying, but the lack of movement was almost worse: It gave Enjolras the opportunity to really feel the heat coming off of Grantaire’s usually cold person. “I don’t hate you, Apollo.”

“Well.” Enjolras fidgeted and tried to step back, but Grantaire’s hands on his hips kept him from pulling away. “It certainly seems like you do.”

Grantaire tilted his head back and laughed loud enough to draw the attention of some of the others dancing to the music, the length of his neck so pale that it seemed translucent compared to the deep black of his hair. “I like you, Apollo.” Enjolras was suddenly reminded that Grantaire was drunk, by the heavy scent of alcohol on his breath. “You have too much faith, but I like you.”

“There’s no such thing.” The fluttering in Enjolras’s stomach had been briefly replaced by the same flame that drove him during meetings. “There’s no such thing as too much faith. I wish you wouldn’t come around and be an ass if you don’t believe in anything.”

The drunken mirth vanished from Grantaire’s eyes in an instant, replaced by a somber sincerity that held Enjolras’s gaze captive. “I believe in you.” As quickly as it had appeared, this rare sincerity vanished, and Grantaire once again began swaying to the music, using one of his hands to tuck Enjolras’s hair behind his ear. “Just dance with me, Enjolras.”

Maybe it was the shock that shot through his body, or the fact that there were so many people pressing around them that Enjolras couldn’t move if he wanted to, or the surprising realization that he didn’t want to move, but Enj let Grantaire wrap his arms around his waist, even moved his own hands to Grantaire’s shoulders, and allowed himself to dance. Just this once.


	9. The Massive Inconvenience

“So, are we going to talk about it?” Combeferre’s tentative question broke the silence as he, Enjolras and Courfeyrac sat around the dinner table, awkwardly picking at their leftover Chinese takeout. Enjolras had spent the day after the concert seeming pensive and subdued, staring blankly at his textbooks without really reading them and nearly running straight into a wall when he got up to clear his head. Even his friends’ insistence that he join them for dinner couldn’t seem to wipe the troubled expression off his face.

“Talk about what?” Enjolras replied, a bit more harshly than he had intended. He took a deep breath and tried again. “There’s nothing to talk about. Nothing happened. It was fun to have a night out, but now it’s time to keep focusing on the things that really matter.”

“Like that International Relations textbook that you were so studiously not-reading all day?” Courfeyrac quipped, to a steely glare from Enjolras.

“Look, we’re just saying, you’re allowed to have feelings Enj,” Combeferre amended softly. “And if you need help figuring them out – ”

“I  _ don’t  _ have feelings for Grantaire!” Enjolras shoved his chair back from the table and leapt to his feet, storming back into the recesses of the apartment. 

“But none of us even mentioned Grantaire!” Courfeyrac called back hopelessly. He and Combeferre shared an exasperated look, entirely missed by Enjolras as he retreated to his room. Enjolras was remarkably intelligent in many disciplines, but evidently not in understanding his own human emotions. This was going to be a long semester.

 

* * *

  
  


Enjolras’s head was spinning. It had been for days, beginning after he’d woken up the morning after the concert, wondering if the previous night’s events had really happened, or if they had all taken place in some sort of strange and surreal dream. He had never been one for nights out, for dressing up solely for his own enjoyment and dancing in the dim light of clubs or concert venues until the early hours of the morning. Had that really been him in those tight jeans, suddenly overly conscious of the way the light was hitting his hair? Had he really spent the night pressed up against Grantaire by the surging crowd as they tried to move their bodies to the music? At first Enjolras had tried to make conversation, tried to get to know this previously unseen, almost carefree version of Grantaire, but the crowd was too rowdy and the music was too loud. He had simply surrendered, letting his body feel the music, listening as Grantaire belted the lyrics of every song. 

Now, though, he was about as far from carefree surrender as anyone could be. All he was left with was confusion. He wasn’t sure what it was about Grantaire that made him so unsure of himself, unable to sort out his own feelings. Regardless, he was sure of one thing; it was a massive inconvenience. The simple act of walking across campus to get to class was difficult when he was afraid of bumping into a certain someone. It was difficult to plan meetings with his phone perpetually on silent, in the hopes that any messages from that certain someone would go unnoticed. Even these precautions couldn’t stop his thoughts, which somehow kept circling back to Grantaire. 

Despite all of Enjolras’s valiant efforts of avoidance, he was steeling himself for the very real possibility of running into Grantaire at the meeting at the end of the week. He found it very rudely surprising, then, when, while exiting the Musain after dropping off some papers several days before the meeting, he quite literally ran into someone wearing a very familiar green beanie and a surprised smile. 

“Enjolras,” Grantaire smiled. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here on a day without a meeting.” 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras greeted as calmly as he could, trying to mask the fact that his heart rate had just sped up dramatically with a curt nod. Unfortunately, Grantaire didn’t seem to get the message.

“Listen, uh, I had a really good time last weekend. I’m not sure when the band’s next gig is, but in the meantime do you think you’d want to – ”

“No,” Enjolras interjected, altogether too quickly. He wanted to elaborate, to explain that he was scared, not of spending time with Grantaire, but of wanting to. Grantaire still inspired in him feelings that no other person had made him experience. After the concert, Enjolras was pretty sure that that feeling wasn’t exactly revulsion, but that revelation was still more confusing than it was enlightening. Regardless, Enjolras immediately regretted his hurried interruption as he watched the electric light that had been burning in Grantaire’s eyes since the concert grow dim and die, replaced by a flat green stare that made Enjolras’s stomach churn with guilt.

“I just mean, I don’t really go to concerts. I already told you that. This was just a one-time thing. And, I mean, with school and everything…” Enjolras’s frantic attempts to backpedal were met with the same, unchanging flat stare. 

“Right, of course,” Grantaire took a step back, rubbing the back of his neck in apparent embarrassment. “Sorry. School is… school. Anyway. I’ll just see you around, I guess.” Without looking back, Grantaire shoved his way past Enjolras and into the Musain. Enjolras was left alone on the sidewalk, drowning in confusion and guilt. Maybe Combeferre had been right; he was really going to need some help to get out of this one.

  
  



	10. The Duality of Man

The weeks following his dismal conversation with Grantaire saw Enjolras embracing his own very unique conception of the duality of man. During the day he was all passion and drive, working with Cosette and the other feminism club leadership to decide what their first joint action should be, and at night he retreated quickly and sullenly to his room, ignoring Combeferre and Courfeyrac’s concerned questions under the pretense of studying. 

Holed up in his room, Enjolras would simply lay on his bed, set his black laptop open next to his head, and then stare dejectedly at the ceiling until he fell asleep. He was unused to this – this inability to focus that he could barely manage to overcome during the day, costing him every ounce of energy he possessed. Even though Enjolras had been known to sleep in on occasion, those rare boughts of laziness were few and far inbetween. More often than not it was Enjolras who woke first in the apartment, and immediately made his way into the kitchen to sit on a stool and debate with morning news shows until Combeferre came down with the sole purpose of making breakfast, in order to keep Enjolras relatively quiet. That hadn’t been happening lately, either. Instead, Enjolras would drag himself out of bed after his third and final alarm, and slouch slowly into the kitchen. He didn’t respond to the news programs that Courfreyrac inevitably turned on as soon as he heard Enjolras’s bedroom door open, and instead merely grabbed a cup of coffee to take back to his room and drink in silence. 

Enjolras knew what was bothering him enough to affect such a change in his routine, what he didn’t get was why. The color green was supposed to be calming, the color most clearly visible to the human eye, but Enjolras was beginning to see it as a color full of anxiety, confusion, and a strange kind of hurt that he couldn’t quite define. Green was everywhere – from the grass to Combeferre’s animal-themed decorations around the apartment to the eyes of a certain bacchanalian young man who had taken to smirking at Enjolras from across the Musain, calling out variations of ‘Hey,  _ Apollo _ ’ (Always said with varying degrees of derision and plain malice, depending on just how drunk he was). ‘Have you changed the world yet? Of course not – you must be too busy, what with school and all.’ Enjolras never responded. How could he? No really – what could he say to make this whole situation go away. That knowledge would be more than welcome, because he was beginning to fear that the guilt he felt over the hurt and anger in Grantaire’s eyes would soon affect his work with his still very much developing organization. He wished he could go to the man and apologize, mend their relationship and give himself some peace of mind so he could focus on the mammoth tasks in front of him. But, Enjolras couldn’t even seem to define what kind of relationship he was trying to mend. They certainly weren’t friendly, and even dancing together at that concert they hadn’t spoken or learned a single bit of information about the other. Grantaire had been drunk on alcohol, and Enjolras had been drunk on the music, and drunk on the color Green. There was no word he could find for what his relationship with Grantaire was, so he decided one night as he was staring at the pale white of his ceiling to call it Green. His relationship with Grantaire was Green. An opaque, muddy green like a layer of slime covering a pond, sick and impossible to ignore as you wade through it, shockingly cold against your skin. A green that sticks to you even when you can’t see it anymore.

That was the state Enjolras was in when Courfeyrac and Combeferre entered his room after dinner. Drowning in Green. He had headphones in and was listening to – read as, scowling down at his journal while playing in the background – a recording of one of his lectures, every once in a while scratching some notes into his journal with gestures so sudden and intense they seemed designed to release all his frustration in one go. It took almost five minutes for him to notice that his two friends were standing beside his bed, and even then he only noticed because Courfeyrac had gotten tired of waiting and plopped himself down onto the bed. Rather, plopped himself painfully onto Enjolras’s legs. “Jesus, Courf!” Enjolras yelped, immediately yanking the earbuds out of his ears and attempting to move his legs in spite of the fact that Courf had just decided it would be a good idea to lay down across them. “Ferre? Help?” Enjolras turned to shoot a pleading glance at his other friend, but was shocked and slightly terrified to find himself face-to-face with the giant, creepily smiling sloth that occupied the front of Ferre’s favorite shirt. Before Enj could recover, Combeferre and Courfeyrac had by some unspoken agreement moved to spoon Enjolras on either side, with Courf hugging him around the waist and laying his head on Enjolras’s arm, and Ferre sliding an arm under Enjolras’s head, the creepy sloth shirt pressed right against his cheek.

Enjolras might have felt content, if slightly uncomfortable, had it not been for the not-so-subtle tightening of Courfeyrac’s arms, and Ferre draping one of his legs across Enjolras’s body to hook around Courf. Enjolras was trapped. He knew that he could only go on skipping meals and retreating to his room for so long before these two intervened, he had just expected to get a couple more days of sulking out of this situation. “Enjolras.” Combeferre’s voice drifted down to his ear from somewhere above his head. “Enjolras, we should talk.”

Enjolras fidgeted, and finding no chance of escape from his friends’ idea of a therapeutic hold, simply sighed and closed his eyes. Courfeyrac spoke up next, his voice muffled by Enjolras’s shirt. “Come on, Enj. We know you’re upset and we know it’s because you made an ass of yourself in front of Grantaire.”

“Courf!” There was a dull thump, Enjolras assumed from the way Courfeyrac jolted into his side that he had received a well-meaning kick. “What he means is, we know that you’ve been upset by this...tension between you and Grantaire.”

“Why would I be upset. He’s done nothing but distract me from our cause. I should be grateful that he’s not hanging around the meetings anymore.” Even as the words left his mouth, Enjolras could feel Combeferre and Courfeyrac share an exasperated look. Enj may be clueless about a lot of things, but certainly not everything.

“Enj.” Combeferre sighed. “You like him.”

“Like him?” Enjolras snorted. “He does nothing but get on my nerves.”

Courfeyrac poked Enjolras in the side and lifted his head enough to be clearly heard. “Not like that, Enj. You know what we mean. You don’t have to like him to  _ like _ him.”

Enj sighed and took a moment before replying. “Even if I did  _ like  _ him, which I don’t, I can’t afford to be distracted at a time like this. We’re finally getting somewhere – Cosette and I finalized the plans for a sexual assault awareness campaign this morning.”

“We know, Enj. We were there.” Combeferre sighed. “And it’s great, but look. You can’t change the world if you let this thing with Grantaire distract you so much.”

“I resent that.” Enjolras felt himself tense up in the middle of their friendship-sandwich, and Courfeyrac’s arms tightened to keep him from trying to get up. “I have not been distracted. I’ve been able to handle school and this organization and our plans with the feminism club and –”

“Shh, shh.” Courfeyrac rubbed Enjolras’s stomach in what he must have thought was a soothing motion. 

Combeferre stifled his chuckles in Enjolras’s currently rather knotted and frizzy hair, before voicing what Courfeyrac was trying to convey through his shushing. “Enj, we know you’ve gotten a lot done. But you’ve only been able to do that because you spend all your energy on doing everything  _ but  _ think about Grantaire. Then when you’re finally exhausted, you come back here and retreat to your room to sit here like some sort of echidna all night long. Even you can’t keep that up forever.” 

“Echidna? Ferre, what in the name of Robespierre is an echidna?”

“An anteater. They sleep for like, half a day or more and then when they are awake they have to run around and eat mountains and mountains of ants to sustain themselves.”

“I don’t sleep for half a day.” Enjolras sighed and nodded slightly. “But you’re right. I’ll talk to him. At some point, I’ll talk to him.”

He could practically feel Ferre’s mouth curl into a satisfied smile against his scalp, and made to sit up because the heat from being squashed between his two friends had come close to being uncomfortable. As soon as he shifted, Courfeyrac made a high pitched whine in the back of his throat and squeezed Enjolras tightly. “Courf, what the hell?”

“He’s just about fallen asleep. Best if we don’t even try to move now, he won’t like it.”

“How do you even know that,” Enjolras sighed as he reluctantly settled back into his previous position.

“I have experience,” Combeferre laughed. “Just get comfortable, we’ll be here for a while.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, a meeting was held at the café Musain to introduce their plans for a sexual assault awareness week to all the members of the organization. Combeferre and Courfeyrac currently flanked Enjolras, gently steering him through the entryway, and up the stairs into the open space where many members were currently socializing, waiting to be called away into the meeting room. It was at the top of the stairs where Courf and Ferre left his side, calling out a loud greeting to the mass of people gathered into the small space, and herding them into the even smaller meeting room. Enjolras stayed behind, watching as the majority of people trickled slowly into the back room. Only a few people remained – they were all regular patrons, some of whom joined in the meetings on occasion. Enjolras didn’t focus on them. He was too busy staring at the small group gathered around the pool table. Grantaire stood, it was too early even for him to be swaying yet, around the table with Bahorel and Feuilly, both of whom Enjolras had met. None of them seemed particularly buzzed yet – a shame, that might have made this easier – but a few empty glasses were perched precariously along the edge of the pool table. Enjolras felt that he had been standing and staring for too long, a feeling that was confirmed when Grantaire suddenly looked up and met his eyes. Enjolras attempted to smile over the swirling sensation in his stomach, but the snide look that came over Grantaire’s face did away with that attempt. “Well,  _ Apollo?   _ Why aren’t you in your meeting. You’ll never make a difference hanging around with the likes of me.”

Bahorel and Feuilly had the decency to look uncomfortable, and both decided to direct all their attention towards a particularly interesting striped ball. Enjolras forced his legs to carry him closer to the table, Grantaire’s stance becoming more agitated with each step. At last Enjolras stood beside the table, opposite Grantaire. He could feel his face burning – no doubt it was a shade of red brighter than any ever seen – and he had to tear his gaze away from Grantaire’s eyes to stare at the felt table top. Which was also green. “Grantaire. I was wondering if you’d like to join us in the room. The meeting. The, the room where we’re meeting.”

He didn’t have to look up to know that Grantaire, Bahorel, and Feuilly were staring at him with identical expressions, probably made up mostly of shock with a robust pinch of confusion. “Join you?”

“Yes. We’re introducing the plans for our first joint event with the feminism club and I think your opinion would be valuable. Bahorel and Feuilly are, of course, invited as well.” Damn. That was too stiff. Enjolras was tense all over, and it was making him sound just about as sincere as a grade schooler whose teacher had told him to go apologise to the young girl whose hair he had pulled.

The sound of laughter, loud and boisterous with just a hint of raspiness which made it seem all the more wild, prompted Enjolras into raising his eyes. The sight sent something warm and, dare he say it, fluttery through him. Grantaire’s head was thrown back to expose his shockingly pale neck dotted with the occasional freckle, his eyes were scrunched closed, and the laughter seemed to start from the base of his feet and rise up before shooting out of his open mouth. He appeared more carefree and joyful in that moment than ever before, even in comparison to his demeanor at the concert that had started all this mess. When the laughter finally subsided, Enjolras was fixed with a slanting smile that somehow seemed to be wider than Grantaire’s own face. “Lead the way, Apollo.”


	11. The Art Major

Now that Enjolras had, hopefully, sort-of-fixed things with Grantaire, he was relieved to finally shift his attention to the issues that actually mattered, like student revolution. Or, as Combeferre and Courfeyrac seemed to see it, like printing lots and lots of pamphlets. 

“Come on, Enj, I know it’s not very exciting, but you’re not going to get people on board with your causes if they don’t even know what you’re trying to change,” Combeferre said in an attempt to reason with Enjolras as the latter paced back and forth across their living room. 

“Yeah, did Thor: Ragnarok teach you nothing?” Courfeyrac piped up, stepping in from the kitchen wearing a pink apron that Enjolras had no idea they even owned and gesticulating firmly with a greasy spatula. “You’ll never start a  successful revolution if you don’t print enough pamphlets.”

Enjolras, who wasn’t sure he’d even seen Thor: Ragnarok, let out a frustrated huff, raking a hand through his hair. 

“ _Fine._ If it’s so important, can you guys at least help me make some flyers?”  
Combeferre and Courfeyrac shared a look that Enjolras couldn’t quite comprehend, which only served to frustrate him further.

“Of course we would, Enj, but does it have to be  _ right  _ now?” Combeferre implored.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m a little busy right now,” Courfeyrac added, gesturing in the general direction of his frilly apron and the pasta sauce smeared on his cheek.  “But if it absolutely  _ has  _ to be now…”

“What?”  
“No, never mind, you wouldn’t like it.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t?” Enjolras’s pacing sped up at the prospect of immediate action, leading his roommates to worry, not for the first time, that he might actually wear a hole in their already questionable carpet. “If it’s for the good of the organization then I’m all for it.” 

“Well,” said Courfeyrac, seeming to draw out his words with exaggerated suspense, “I happen to know that _ Grantaire _ is an incredible artist.”

That stopped Enjolras in his tracks.  
“And I have a feeling that, if you were to ask him, he’d be more than happy to help you.”

Enjolras chewed his lip as he mulled it over. On one hand, he was still scared and unsure of himself around Grantaire, even after their cautious reconciliation. On the other hand, it would all be in support of the cause… and asking Grantaire for his help would, if nothing else, solidify his place in support of Enjolras’s revolution. The pros certainly seemed to outweigh the cons.

“See, I told you you wouldn’t like it,” Courfeyrac broke into Enjolras’s prolonged silence with mock disappointment, turning to go back to the kitchen. 

“I’ll do it,” Enjolras said, interrupting Courfeyrac’s retreat with a resolve that surprised even himself. 

Combeferre and Courfeyrac both raised their eyebrows in surprise.

“Well then,” Combeferre said, “Go ahead and text him, I’m sure he’s still –”

He was interrupted by the sound of water boiling over in the next room, and Courfeyrac’s subsequent panicked shrieks as he rushed back to the kitchen. No matter, though. Enjolras didn’t need instructions. He just needed the resolve to follow through with what he already knew he had to do.

 

This was how, at half past nine, Enjolras found himself hurrying across campus with an armful of whatever art supplies he could find around his apartment and a death grip on his phone in hopes that he might get a text saying that Grantaire had changed his mind and was unwilling to help him after all. Unfortunately, no such text came. As he reached the doors of the student housing complex in which Grantaire lived, Enjolras resigned himself to his fate.

After knocking a few times and receiving no response, Enjolras was flooded with relief and disappointment, but both were short-lived. Enjolras’s third bout of knocking had finally alerted the apartment’s inhabitants to his presence, and the door flew open to reveal Grantaire on the other side. He was raking a hand through the hair on the back of his head in what seemed to be a nervous gesture, but his face bore the same seemingly self-assured smirk as always.

“Apollo,” he said by way of greeting. “I understand I can be of some assistance.”

Enjolras took a deep breath, mentally pushing down his nerves as he spoke. “Yes, actually. I need to make some flyers for our upcoming collaboration with the feminism club. Design isn’t really my strong suit, but Courfeyrac said you were good at this sort of thing, so – I was hoping you could help me.” As though to drive his point home, Enjolras pushed the art supplies he was holding toward Grantaire for inspection. 

‘Art supplies’ may have been a generous description, Enjolras realized, as he watched Grantaire survey the handful of mismatched crayons, unsharpened colored pencils and wrinkled poster board that Enjolras had managed to dredge from the recesses of his apartment with poorly concealed amusement. Despite himself, Enjolras felt a bit defensive. It certainly wasn’t  _ his  _ fault that he had no artistic talent or interest whatsoever.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Grantaire conceded, the corner of his mouth tugging upwads into a grin as he stepped aside to let Enjolras into his apartment. 

Grantaire’s apartment, like most student apartments, was small and a bit rundown, but Grantaire had somehow managed to fill his with personality. The downstairs common area was full of objects indicating a range of odd hobbies, from a small electric keyboard in the corner to an easel pushed up against the wall to a shelf overflowing with books and DVDs of every genre Enjolras could think of. 

“My roommates are out,” Grantaire said as he led Enjolras through the entryway and into said common area, “so we may have half a chance of actually getting something done. Having Bahorel and Feuilly here is usually great, but it’s not exactly helpful where concentration is concerned.” 

Enjolras simply nodded. He’d had no idea who Grantaire lived with, or where. It was dawning on him how much he didn’t know about the boy who had spent the past few weeks unwittingly derailing his life.

As he moved to set out the wrinkled paper he’d brought from his apartment on Grantaire’s mess of a coffee table, covered with a tangle of video game controllers and what looked like a beaten copy of  _ War and Peace,  _ Grantaire stopped him. 

“No no no. I may have agreed to help you, but my generosity has limits. I am  _ not  _ using that pitiful excuse for paper, and in no world are we designing any flyers with crayons.”

“But then how –”

“God, Apollo, for someone who speaks like divinity incarnate you can be really dense sometimes. I’ll be right back.”

Grantaire ducked out of the room. Enjolras was still reeling from the backhanded compliment when he returned, bearing a fancy-looking sketchpad and a case full of pencils in more colors than Enjolras had thought existed.

“You’re an art major?” Enjolras voiced his sudden realization rather more bluntly than he had intended, and was rewarded with another sarcastic quirk of Grantaire’s eyebrows.

“Indeed. I suppose there’s a lot you don’t know about me, fearless leader.”

 

Enjolras ensured that that ignorance didn’t last long. He’d never been one for small talk, but, as Grantaire sketched out idea after idea for interesting and user-friendly handouts, he felt compelled to help fill the silence. And getting to know Grantaire, he supposed, couldn’t hurt either.

He learned that Grantaire was indeed an art major, much to the chagrin of his father, who had always pushed his son to consider more mathematically-related fields of study and who had been increasingly disappointed when he’d failed. Grantaire and his father didn’t seem to see eye to eye on much, a situation Enjolras could, unfortunately, relate to all too well. He also learned that the piano in the corner was Grantaire’s, as was the easel, and one third of the DVD collection. Despite the immense amounts of dedication and skill required to master the first two items on that list, Grantaire seemed especially proud of the third, a point which was proving disastrous for Enjolras despite the amount of time that Courfeyrac dedicated to keeping him updated about pop culture. 

“You’re telling me you’ve never seen a  _ single  _ Captain America movie?” Grantaire exclaimed indignantly as he put the finishing touches on the cover design of yet another (incredibly well-made, Enjolras had to admit) flyer. Enjolras simply shrugged. He wasn’t exactly up-to-date on popular movies, recently released or otherwise.

“Why do you care, though? Doesn’t he kind of go against everything you stand for?” Enjolras challenged, hoping he had a good enough grasp of the concept from listening to arguments between his friends to retaliate. “The whole self-sacrificing patriotism thing is exactly antithetical to anything you’ve ever said or done.”

Enjolras had been hoping for a laugh, but was worried he’d taken it too far when when Grantaire didn’t even look up from the pamphlets he was busy stacking.

“Maybe so,” he finally said, more subdued than Enjolras had ever seen him. “Maybe I know  _ I’ll  _ never be a hero or change the world. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish someone could.” Grantaire met his eyes then, and suddenly Enjolras felt like they weren’t talking about movies anymore. His whole body seemed to buzz with frantic electricity as he stared into Grantaire’s eyes.

“We’ll have to watch it sometime,” Enjolras said breathlessly, unable to find the words to say anything else. Grantaire grinned at him, the previous moment’s unprecedented seriousness gone as soon as it had come.

“It’s a date,” he replied, handing Enjolras the stack of finished flyers from the coffee table. (Were they really done already? Once they’d started talking, Enjolras had hardly felt the time passing.) “Good night, Apollo.”

  
  



	12. The Documentary

Enjolras arrived home in a whirlwind of smiles and blonde hair flowing behind him and a hazy chorus of Grantaire’s crooked grin saying ‘it’s a date it’s a date it’s a  _ date.’  _ The phrase doesn’t really mean anything – Enjolras knows this, of course he does – but it had been playing on a never-ending loop from the moment he left Grantaire’s apartment. Combeferre had often extolled the benefits of exploring and confronting your feelings, but Enjolras preferred to let his feelings come to him. Sometimes it took a while, and sometimes it never happened, but on the rare occasions where his feelings did decide to hit him it became an almost otherworldly experience. That was the state he found himself in, practically drunk on the realization that he  _ wanted _ it to be a date. He wanted to go on a date with Grantaire. 

Enjolras was spared from further examining this realization by the intense onset of hunger that snuck up on him as soon as he entered the kitchen. The small dining room table had been set up nicely, draped with a white tablecloth and with a still burning candle in the center of the table, their best plates (read, their only plates not made of compostable paper material) sitting there accompanied by real silverware that Enjolras had not even known existed within the walls of their apartment. None of this held his attention. Instead, Enjolras was focused on the  _ heavenly _ smell that permeated the kitchen – he wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it smelled like food. Not the half-an-avocado type food that he was used to, but like the warm and loving meals he had always looked forward to as a child, before he realized that anything in excess was a slight to the suffering of others. But, as he reasoned with himself now, it could also be considered a slight to reject this food and allow it to go to waste if it were already here. These were the thoughts running through his mind as he wandered over to the oven, expecting to find a plate covered in foil sitting there waiting for him. The oven was empty. Enjolras was perturbed, because Ferre usually made such a fuss out of ensuring that both Enj and Courf got proper portions, as the two young men were particularly prone to distraction. 

Never one to be discouraged when an idea took hold of him, Enjolras made his way up the stairs and across the hall to Combeferre’s door. He heard muffled noises coming from inside, seemingly a combination of grunts and giggles. Enjolras had never been so confused until he remembered what day it was. The day Animal Planet released a new documentary all about pigs. Just pigs. He raised his fist and knocked loudly on the door three times, almost yelling “Hey you guys, I know you’re somehow enjoying yourselves but how about keeping it down just a little?”

Now the grunts and giggles were replaced with muffled cursing and shuffling, and there was even the sound of a thump as someone – presumably Courfeyrac – landed hard on the floor. Enjolras was about to knock again, when a wide-eyed and messy-haired Combeferre jerked the door open just enough to thrust his head in Enjolras’s space and hiss, “What!”

Enjolras took a step back, surprised by the slightly frantic look in Combeferre’s eyes, and stared. Ferre sighed and opened the door all the way, revealing his only half buttoned shirt and generally disheveled appearance. “Sorry, what do you need, Enjolras.”

“Well, uh, I was just wondering if you had any dinner left over.” Enjolras was beginning to feel uncomfortable, a feeling which the blank stare Combeferre fixed him with only augmented.

“Really, Enj?” Courfeyrac appeared behind Ferre in the doorway, clad only in his boxers and a shirt with a picture of a sloth on it that Enjolras found, for some reason, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from. Ferre followed Enjolras’s gaze and coughed into his hand, quickly walking back into his room and flopping down on the bed. 

Courfeyrac sighed and leaned his head against the doorframe. “Look, I know this is weird, but like, I hope you aren’t mad we didn’t tell you and I hope you’ll be able to adjust to it.”

Enjolras let out an awkward laugh and shrugged. “What? I don’t care that you didn’t invite me to watch the documentary. It’s not a big deal, really.”

The room was silent for a few moments, except for Combeferre letting out a single high-pitched laugh from his place on the bed. After a moment Courfeyrac just chuckled and shook his head. “It’s, it’s alright. There’s leftovers in a covered pan in the fridge. We’ll just be here… Combeferre is  _ really _ excited about this documentary, so I’d suggest if you don’t want  to get sucked in you stay downstairs, or even maybe go stay at Joly’s.” The last part was said in a conspiratorial whisper.

Enjolras nodded and smiled gratefully. “Thanks for the warning. I could try to get you out of it?”

Courfeyrac smiled and said, “Thank you, Enj. But I think I’ll be okay.”

He didn’t wait for Enjolras to start walking away before he closed the door, just like Enjolras didn’t wait for him to close it before turning to rush down the stairs two at a time, head pounding with the thought of something important that he just couldn’t seem to put together. Before he had time to worry about it, or rather worry about what he would do to keep his mind off of it, he heard his phone chime from somewhere in the downstairs area. In his addled state after the meeting with Grantaire he had left all his things scattered across the apartment, and so now he found himself trying to push the tense conversation with his two best friends out of his mind – he’s been pushing a lot of things out of his mind lately, he noticed – and running around the living room and kitchen searching for his phone. His only problem was that the chiming wasn’t consistent. It happened a few times and then ended, and now, ten minutes later, he still had nothing to show for his efforts. With a heavy sigh, Enjolras rubbed a hand across his face and decided that he would forget about his phone for the time being, and instead satiate the hunger that had been gnawing at him. So Enjolras found the leftovers and ate alone, and when he was done, forewent his usual nightly conversations with Combeferre and Courfeyrac and went to sleep.

 

* * *

 

“Enjolras. Enjolras.”

“Just leave him alone, he’s fine!”

“He’s not fine, Courf, he has a ten o’clock class and you know he’s going to freak out if he misses it.”

“But Ferre! Remember he had to meet with Grantaire yesterday. That must’ve cost him all his social energy for the rest of the year.”

“You know you’re right, I almost forgot. We never got to bother him about what happened – maybe we should go in and surprise him.”

“No you should not.” Enjolras groaned. He hadn’t even opened his eyes, and was merely laying on his bed staring into the darkness behind his eyelids. “It went fine. I behaved myself.”

“And how difficult was that?” Courfeyrac cackled.

There was a loud thump as Enjolras sat up and threw one of the many notebooks that had taken up permanent residence on his bed at the door. He could hear Courfeyrac laughing his way into the kitchen, and Combeferre’s chuckling just outside his door. “And what are you waiting on?”

“No need to be touchy, I just thought you’d want your phone back. It looks like you have some messages from someone, R? I’ll just slide it under the door.”

“You went through my messages?”

“No. I just wasn’t fast enough to stop Courfeyrac from going through them. See you later!”

“Yes, run so you don’t have to apologize,” Enjolras grumbled, even though he was only actually mildly irritated at the turn of the events. At least, he supposed, he didn’t have to look for his phone anymore.

Dragging himself out of bed, Enj stumbled sleepily over to the door and snatched his phone off the ground, turning to sit at his desk and look through the messages. The first text was a picture of the logo Grantaire had designed (Enjolras  _ is _ humble enough to realize he had very little part in what got accomplished the previous night), expertly converted from a sketch on a paper to a graphic image that Enjolras could paste onto all their future flyers. The sight of it made Enjolras’s chest tighten strangely, almost completely distracting him from the various text messages that followed.

_ here’s the logo Apollo, hope u like it as much as the sketch _

_ just went ahead and put it together _

_ aaaalso  _

_ gonna watch cap america tonight _

_ & i’m ordering pizza _

_ free food _

_ u in??? _


	13. The Four-Letter Word

Enjolras was pretty sure that his professor was saying words, but he was finding that actually deciphering and understanding those words was a little bit beyond his realm of interest right now. As the lecturer droned on and on about something possibly related to European foreign relations, Enjolras snuck his phone out onto his lap and glanced through his recent texts for what must have been the thousandth time. His brief exchange with Grantaire was still at the forefront of his mind, and he couldn’t seem to stop reading and rereading the conversation. 

 

 **R:** _aaaalso_

_ gonna watch cap america tonight _

_ & i’m ordering pizza _

_ free food _

_ u in??? _

 

 **E:** _Hmm, tough choice._

_ Though I suppose, if there will be pizza… _

 

 **R:** _u can’t say no to free food_

_ if u do ur not even a real college student _

_ i dont make the rules  _

 

 **E:** _Well, then, for the sake of my degree, I’m in._

 

 **R:** _glad u’ve got ur priorities straight_

_ 8pm _

_ it’s a date _

 

There were those words again, always seeming to reduce Enjolras to a confused and flustered mess. He’d never been on a  _ real  _ date before; he’d never been particularly interested in going out with girls, and, by the time he’d realized that there were other options, his schedule was so packed with academics and saving the world that he’d simply resolved to put the whole “dating” thing on the back burner and not think about it. He found himself seriously paying the price for that now, as he lost an entire lecture’s worth of information to a spiral of anxious thoughts that always circled back to  _ the date.  _

Enjolras returned to his apartment at 5 pm, with three whole hours until the dreaded date was to begin. Finding it easier not to have to explain the whole situation to Courfeyrac and Combeferre, who were probably busy watching some sort of documentary anyway, he marched straight to his room and flung open his closet in search of something to wear. Remembering the advice his friends had given him, albeit rather aggressively, before the concert, he left his new-ish running shoes on the shelf for another day and instead pulled out his favorite jeans, which hugged his legs a bit less than Courfeyrac’s did but fit well nonetheless, and a white t-shirt with a bit of his signature red in the stitching along the hem. It was an outfit he felt good in.

This did not, however, prevent him from throwing off the clothes in distaste and changing into three separate outfits, before electing to wear the same clothes that he’d picked out in the first place. By this point he barely had time to let down his hair and arrange it in a way he could only hope was presentable. If the clouds gathering outside his window, promising a coming downpour, were any indication, he had a feeling it wouldn’t remain that way for long anyway.

Before heading out, Enjolras took a deep, shaky breath to calm his nerves. He’d spoken in front of crowds bigger than most of his lecture classes put together. He’d participated in rallies, marched in protests, and broken rules whenever he found them unjust, regardless of the consequences. Yet somehow this _date_ , this cursed four-letter word, was going to get the best of him. 

At 7:30, Enjolras slipped out of his apartment and began his walk to Grantaire’s. For the first time, he found himself regretting the fact that he refused to own a personal vehicle; the environment was in danger, worth protecting, etc., but the things the wind could do to his  _ hair _ . He immediately felt guilty for thinking it, but couldn’t fully get rid of the notion that he wouldn’t need nearly as much conditioner if he could escape the humidity by traveling in the closed environment of a car. He’d also forgotten his umbrella, a fact which he realized once he was too far from his apartment to turn back but which still irked him as the sky continued to darken.

He wanted time to be nervous, and maybe question some of the terrible decisions that had led him to this point, but, by the time Enjolras reached Grantaire’s door, a few fat raindrops had already splattered on the pavement beneath his feet, a sure sign of more rain to come. He had no choice but to raise his fist and knock decisively, hoping that whatever awaited him inside was at least better than the alternative of getting drenched.

He had scarcely made contact with the door before it swung open, revealing an indubitably nervous, but smiling, Grantaire. Enjolras slowly lowered his fist, suddenly overcome with how far out of his depth he really was. He had no  _ idea  _ what to say. Neither, apparently, did Grantaire. 

“D’you wanna –” Grantaire began, glancing up and down as though to take in the entirety of Enjolras’s person and faltering slightly. “You should come in,” he finally managed, stepping aside to let Enjolras out cross the threshold and escape the rain. 

Enjolras had been in Grantaire’s apartment before, just the other day, but he couldn’t help but feel that something was different this time. As he came into view of the living room, it became obvious; this time, they weren’t alone. Two curious pairs of eyes, which Enjolras could only assume belonged to Grantaire’s roommates, were peering at him, though as soon as Enjolras entered the room they tried to busy themselves by looking at just about anything else. He knew Bahorel and Feuilly from meetings, a fact which simply served to make the situation all the more awkward. Enjolras nodded a tentative greeting in their direction, which they returned, a little too enthusiastically for Enjolras’s comfort. 

“Hey, c’mon, guys, we talked about this,” Grantaire cut in, saving Enjolras the trouble of having to explain to two members of the organization that they all, save Grantaire, took very seriously, exactly what he was doing in their apartment. “The TV is mine tonight. I have to give Apollo here a cultural education. It’s a public service.”

Bahorel and Feuilly rolled their eyes and took their time standing up from the couch. “Fine, R, in the interest of public service, we’ll allow it,” Bahorel said teasingly. “But you owe us. We’re missing out on a full night on the PS4 for you.”

“Should I…?” Enjolras started as Bahorel and Feuilly retreated upstairs. The last thing he wanted to do was get in the way of their plans. 

“No, don’t worry about them,” Grantaire said with a roll of his eyes. “They can be little shits sometimes, but I promise they’re always kidding. They were nearly as excited for this as I was.” Seeming to realize what he’d said, Grantaire’s cheeks turned an almost alarming shade of pink. Enjolras, once again, found himself speechless, and the pair lapsed into a decidedly less-than-comfortable silence until Grantaire cleared his throat a bit more loudly than necessary.

“I, uh, already ordered pizza. I hope that’s ok. Shit, I didn’t even ask you what kind – ”

“Anything’s fine,” Enjolras quickly assured him. Really anything  _ wasn’t  _ fine – Enjolras was about as opinionated about pizza toppings as he was about politics – but he decided to save that particular argument for a later date. The current situation was already awkward enough without his food-related opinions.

“Ok, good. That’s…  good. I’ll go ahead and put the movie in while we wait, I guess?” 

Enjolras made as noncommittal a gesture as possible. He had no idea why he was being asked to weigh in, considering he had absolutely no concept of how these sorts of things worked. Grantaire, evidently, took the gesture as a yes, and stepped forward to fiddle with the DVD player as Enjolras gingerly lowered himself onto the very edge of the sofa.

Under the flickering glow of the movie’s opening scenes, Grantaire padded over to the couch and took a seat, careful to leave a gap between himself and Enjolras. He seemed attentive toward the movie, but his fingers betrayed his nervousness; they drummed an unconscious beat on the cushion of the couch, forcing Enjolras’s attention away from the screen and onto Grantaire’s short-trimmed nails and calloused fingers. He wondered – didn’t people hold hands on dates? Was that normal? He felt like it was. People did it all the time. Even Courfeyrac and Combeferre did sometimes. So maybe it wouldn’t be too weird if he just reached for Grantaire’s hand – 

A sharp knock at the apartment’s door startled Enjolras from his reverie. He realized he’d subconsciously started lifting a hand in Grantaire’s direction and quickly forced it into his lap.

“That’ll be the pizza,” Grantaire said, fumbling for the remote and pausing the movie. “I’ll be right back.” 

After a brief, muffled exchange at the front door, Grantaire returned to the living room carrying a somewhat absurd number of rain-splattered pizza boxes. 

“Okay, so we’ve got cheese, pepperoni, vegetable,” Grantaire read off the labels of the boxes, “and, because Feuilly likes, it... pineapple.” Enjolras involuntarily wrinkled his nose, prompting an undignified snort from Grantaire.

“Please tell me that look of profound disgust is directed at the abomination that is pineapple on pizza and not at me.”

“Oh, definitely,” Enjolras assured him. “When I finally rid the world of injustice, pineapple on pizza will be the first thing to go.”

“See, you guys  _ do  _ agree on something!” A voice from across the room interjected, nearly sending Enjolras jumping out of his skin. He’d been so caught up in his proximity to Grantaire that he’d forgotten they weren’t alone in the apartment. Feuilly and Bahorel had joined them once again in the common area, presumably to collect their share of the pizza. 

“I’m so happy for you that I’ll almost forgive you for blaspheming my pineapple pizza.” Feuilly scooped the box labelled ‘Pineapple’ into his arms and turned to give Grantaire a warning look. “Almost.” Grantaire held up his hands in mock surrender as Bahorel and Feuilly retreated upstairs once more, leaving Enjolras and Grantaire to their date.

And it was awkward. The movie played on as they tentatively ate greasy pizza off of paper towels, still carefully maintaining a foot of space between them on the couch. Enjolras had been so distracted throughout the beginning of the film that he’d somehow missed the transition of scenes from war-torn Europe to an American military base, and he had no idea how the plot had progressed to get there. After sitting in confusion for a little while, he made the mistake of asking what was happening, and Grantaire launched into a very thorough explanation that included so many strange and specific words that Enjolras found himself more lost than he’d been before he’d asked. He simply turned his attention to the movie, trying very hard not to think about Grantaire’s hands and Grantaire’s lips and how he would very much like to close the space between them on the sofa, if he only felt he could. 

  
  


“So, what’d you think?” Grantaire asked once the credits had finished rolling, because  _ ‘No, Apollo, you can’t leave a Marvel movie before the end of the credits! God, it’s worse than I thought.’  _ Enjolras hesitated just a moment too long before replying that yes, it was very good, that he enjoyed it, that he could see why Grantaire liked it, et cetera. Grantaire simply raised his eyebrows in response. 

“Okay, then. Well, it’s getting kind of late – ” Grantaire was interrupted by a distant rumble of thunder, reminding them both of the state of the world outside Grantaire’s living room. “Shit, it sounds pretty bad out there. If you want, you can stay the night. I mean, not… you know what I mean. We can set up the couch. Or I can take the couch. Do you want to – ?”

“I should get home,” Enjolras cut in hurriedly. He wasn’t sure how much more of this forced, artificial politeness he could take. As much as he was glad that he and Grantaire had managed to be civil with each other for the duration of the date, something about it still felt uncomfortably stilted. It was as though they weren’t meant to get along perfectly, and attempting to do so went against both of their natures.

“Right, okay. At least let me see if I have an umbrella somewhere…” Grantaire breezed past Enjolras to throw open a closet near the front door and rummage through it, though it became clear after just a few moments that his search was fruitless. Enjolras doubted that Grantaire even owned an umbrella, and if he did, it certainly wouldn’t be in the closet where it belonged.

“It’s okay, really,” Enjolras said, joining Grantaire by the door and beginning to slide on his shoes. “It’s not that far to my apartment, I’ll be fine.”

Grantaire eyed him skeptically, but conceded. “If you say so.”

“Thanks for having me over,” Enjolras tried to remember his manners as he reached for the knob of the door. Grantaire nodded. “Maybe we can… do it again sometime?” 

“Yeah, we… should,” Grantaire began, but Enjolras felt so awkward for even asking that he propelled himself out the door without even hearing the entirety of Grantaire’s response. 

Enjolras’s mind was so jumbled that he barely noticed the rain as he set out in the direction of his apartment. He must have done everything wrong; Grantaire had invited him over but hadn’t been himself, hadn’t even wanted to be near Enjolras. Clearly he wasn’t cut out for this “dating” thing, if those three hours with Grantaire were enough to convince him that he didn’t want to be with Enjolras after all.

As he neared the halfway point of his walk, his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps behind him, hurriedly splashing through puddles as they grew nearer. Enjolras whirled around in a panic, fully expecting to come face-to-face with a serial killer or something of that variety, but instead found himself staring down a very wet, breathless Grantaire.

“Did you find an umbrella?” Enjolras voiced the first thing that came to his mind, because the sight of Grantaire with glimmering rain beading on his hair and skin had stolen any semblance of rationality from his speech. Grantaire stepped closer, shaking his head. He was so close that Enjolras could count the raindrops clinging to his dark eyelashes.

“I don’t even own an umbrella.”

As if in a trance, Enjolras felt himself leaning forward, closing the space between them in the way he wished he’d figured out how to do a lot earlier, and Grantaire was leaning forward too, and they were kissing. Suddenly nothing else mattered.

Their lips met for only a moment, but to Enjolras it felt like both forever and nothing at all. All too soon, Grantaire was breaking away, still gazing at Enjolras in that awestruck way of his, as though Enjolras was a work of art in a museum that he wasn’t permitted to touch. Not for the first time in Grantaire’s presence, Enjolras found himself speechless, realizing that he, too, was staring at Grantaire with something akin to reverence.

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire managed to get control of his verbal faculties first. “I’m sorry that was such a terrible date. I’m sorry I didn’t do that sooner. It’s not like I didn’t want to. You’re just… you’re just unreal.”

Enjolras shook his head incredulously. They’d wanted the same thing all along, but because they were both incredibly stubborn and couldn’t figure it out, they were standing alone on campus in the middle of the night, shivering and soaked to the skin. The ridiculousness of it all sent laughter bubbling up through Enjolras’s chest before he could stop it.

“What?” Grantaire tried to argue, but before he knew it he was laughing too. 

“Oh God, now you’re all wet too,” Enjolras finally forced out through his laughter. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault for insisting on walking home – ”

Grantaire vehemently shook his head. “Worth it. One hundred percent worth it.”

He walked Enjolras the rest of the way to his apartment. Both boys were already so drenched that there was no point in even attempting to stay dry, so they jumped into every puddle they could find, playfully splashing each other and laughing as one feigned dodging the waves stirred up by the other’s shoes. Outside the confines of a classroom, a club meeting, or a stiffly constructed date, all the arguments and misunderstandings between Enjolras and Grantaire seemed to fall away. It was just the two of them, enjoying each other’s company for as long as they possibly could.

That proved to be not nearly long enough, as they reached the door to Enjolras’s apartment long before he wanted to say goodbye. Enjolras, at the very least, forced Grantaire to take his umbrella on the walk back, despite it probably being far too little, far too late. As he stepped over the threshold into his apartment, paying no mind to the wet footprints he was tracking inside, he turned over his shoulder to cast one more look at Grantaire, who had also evidently chosen that moment to look back at Enjolras. He made a show of dropping the umbrella and twirling around in the rain before blowing Enjolras an exaggerated kiss. 

“We should do this again sometime!” He shouted over his shoulder as he retreated down the street. Preferring not to wake his roommates, Enjolras settled for just a wave in return, the quietest way he could think to communicate that he was flying and never wanted to come down.

  
  



	14. The Rally

Enjolras had never, in all his life, experienced such a great sense of peace as when he had a purpose. From the first time he attended a rally he knew that this was element – where others found frustration, chaos, and uncertainty, Enjolras found calm, determination, and focus. The chaos was still there, always inextricable from the workings of change, but he thrived in it. From that first rally he knew it didn’t get any better than that feeling.

He was wrong.

Because here he was, leading the rally in the campus commons on the last day of their sexual assault awareness week, and it was  _ better.  _ It seemed so impossible to him that an already perfect feeling could improve, but he knew why it had. It was Grantaire, proudly passing out pamphlets of his own design and sending conspiratorial smiles in Enjolras’s direction. It was Grantaire, sitting in the front row of the Student Center auditorium watching as Enj and Cosette introduced the school’s sexual harassment policy, a chance at collaboration they organized with the Department of Equal Opportunity. It was Grantaire by his side, cackling in the background while Enjolras educated some uncouth frat boys on the meaning of consent. Enjolras felt spurred on by the simple knowledge of Grantaire’s presence, of his approval, and he moved through the day with a feverish intensity that almost ached.

It was all better. The others noticed it, as well. Combeferre and Courfeyrac were constantly glancing between Grantaire and Enjolras – not that either young man noticed – while the rest of the volunteers were simply enjoying the unprecedented unity among the group. The rally ended with an official endorsement of the organization’s campaign by the dean of the university, approval from authority was something Enjolras was not entirely used to but it didn’t feel too bad, and the groups that had turned out slowly filtered away until the green was left with just the normal amount of people running to and from classes. Enjolras jumped down from his raised stance, still buzzing with the hazy excitement brought on by standing up for a change, and began to meander over to where his small band of friends was waiting. His eyes roamed over the faces – there were Combeferre and Courfeyrac standing entirely too close (something had been up with them lately, he would have to ask later), puppy-eyed Marius hanging onto Cossette’s every word – until he found the one he was looking for. Grantaire was there smiling with the rest of them, a sight which Enjolras could now unashamedly admit made his breath catch in his throat. He didn’t realize as his footsteps quickened, too distracted by the whirlwind of thoughts that accompanied that smile on Grantaire’s face, the most prominent at the moment being ‘ _ too far too far too far.' _

There hadn’t been time for another date since their life-changing encounter in the rain (thinking about it still sent Enjolras into a fog, he can’t really be expected to avoid cliches at the moment), and he was hoping that the end of this rally meant the proper start of – whatever this was between them. They had gone from enemies to friends with a weird sexual tension so strong that it made everyone else in the room blush (at least, that’s what Joly had called it) to something that had, if Enj was being completely honest with himself, not been very well defined. But that didn’t matter to him at the moment. The number of times he had laughed at Marius’s little infatuation with Cossette was coming back to bite him, it seemed, because Enjolras was convinced that everything he and Grantaire would be had been contained in that one single kiss, a rather romanticized notion which would better befit Jehan’s secret notebook of erotic poetry than Enjolras’s single-minded thoughts. Nevertheless, his feeling of hope and promise was augmented when Grantaire caught his eye, tilted smile sending a small shock through Enjolras’s body. Enjolras was closing in on the group, but ignored the others in favor of pursuing that lopsided grin that he found so inexplicably magnetic. Grantaire reached out a hand, moving to tug Enjolras into the space beside him. 

“Hey Apollo, how’s it going?” The words rolled out of a pale mouth and down the length of Grantaire’s freckled arm, unburdened by his signature sweatshirt despite the chill of the afternoon air, accompanied with a flash of something in those dark eyes that excited Enjolras. 

Enjolras had reached out his hand, prepared to settle the minuscule-but-enormous distance that separated the two young men, a divide which felt as significant as the distance between the sun and the moon. Just as Enjolras opened his mouth to greet Grantaire in kind, he felt a distinct pressure behind his nose – “Achoo!”

Grantaire froze with his hand outstretched, staring with faint displeasure at his now snot-covered fingers, while Enjolras wished not for the first time in their odd relationship that the earth would open up and swallow either one of them whole. 

“Well, ew.”  
  


* * *

 

“So, you should be fine with just rest and lots of water. If this persists for more than maybe three or four days, then don’t come anywhere near me and just go straight to a doctor.” Joly currently stood in Enjolras’s room, gathering all of his items together as he listed off his recommendations for the glaring young man who was buried under a pile of blankets in the bed. “Also,” Joly turned to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, who stood in the doorway, “don’t touch him. I don’t want this spreading around through all our friends. And try to make sure he rests, it’s probably all the recent stress and activity that made him susceptible in the first place. I’m surprised we didn’t notice sooner.”

“Well you know how difficult it is to keep this one in line,” Courf laughed, “but we will certainly try.”

Ferre grinned slyly and nudged Courfeyrac’s shoulder. “We could always lock him in and board up the window from the outside. That oughta work.”

“Oh my god!” Enjolras groaned from his place in the bed, “I’m not a child and you two are not my parents. Now let me get up, please, I have work to do!”

“I think he means people to do,” Courfeyrac chuckled, “or rather, a person to  _ do.” _

Enjolras’s already feverishly flushed face turned an even brighter shade of red at the laughter that filled the room after Courf’s comment. Ignoring his indignant sputtering, all of Enjolras’s friends filed out of the cramped room, Joly flicking the light off and shutting the door behind him. Before he even had time to argue, the med student’s command of “Sleep, Enj,” sounded from the hallway. Perhaps it was the dull ache that had begun throbbing through his body (Had that been there all day? He was too distracted to really notice), or perhaps it was the quiet darkness which suddenly blanketed his senses, but Enjolras really found himself too drained to resist the pull of sleep, and allowed himself to sink slowly back into the viridian sea of his sheets.

 


	15. The Water

He felt like he was underwater, lying on his back at the bottom of a deep sea. Removed, still, quiet – The water was completely peaceful except for a small current which occasionally brushed over his forehead, his neck, his eyelids…

There it was again. He was under the water, but he could feel the current like a cool breeze whispering over his face, soothing something that he hadn’t even realized was burning. 

“Enjolras.” 

The word floated down to him, distorted and slow, before wrapping around his head and seeping into his ears. He wasn’t sure what to do with the word, but there was a nagging feeling building in his chest that it definitely meant he was supposed to do  _ something _ . The feeling built upon itself like an increasingly large weight being lowered onto his chest, and with it the water around him seemed to become heavy – impossibly, it was pressing in on him. He opened his mouth to suck in a desperate breath but to his dismay it was only the dense liquid that flooded his lungs. His mind quickly turned to panic as he dimly realized that  _ fuck _ there was no air and he had to swim, had to get to the surface or else there would be no more breaths to take – 

“Hey, Apollo, hey.”

New words. These ones settled over him like a blanket, accompanied by a slight pressure on his forehead that was nudging him back into the warm folds of the seafloor. He struggled against it briefly, but the gentle sounds seemed to alleviate the weight on his chest the more he gave in. Submitting was a good idea, the pleasant tingle that spread across his scalp seemed a fit reward for settling down. The tingles didn’t stop, they continued to travel back and forth over his head, so soothing that he wanted to turn his head and press into the source, but he couldn’t. His head felt heavy, and underneath the welcome sensations rippling from his head all over his body he could detect traces of a dull ache, a continuously throbbing thing rooted at the base of his skull that was attempting to counteract the tingles. 

He didn’t like that. 

A low groan exited his mouth, bubbling up through his oddly dry throat. The tingles suddenly paused at a place on the top of his head, before they receded altogether. A sound of protest tried to push its way out of his throat –  _ painful  _ – but died somewhere in his freezing sternum. Without the pleasant prickling sensations to hold his attention, he felt all the pains of his body rise up at once. The pounding in his skull intensified, pulsing out all the way through his skin and causing the water around him to boil.  _ Burns. _ The rest of his body felt the pulsing, too, but nothing was more unbearable than his head.  _ Where did you go. _

“Is he alright?”

“He’s fine, he just needs a lot of rest right now.”

“But he looks distressed, I mean, it looks like he’s in pain.”

“He looks half dead is what he looks like.”

“Just a fever, he’ll probably ache but serves him right for overdoing it all the time.”

More words began sinking down to him, too fast to grasp and too numerous to be comfortable. They reached his ears and tried to shove themselves in all at once, causing the pulsing in his head to turn into a sharp, steady stream of pain. 

“Oh, god…”  _ Oh. _ It came out of his own mouth that time. It sounded weak and rasping, like someone who was dying of thirst. Except that was impossible because he was  _ drowning _ , he was sure of it. Nothing else could explain the agonizing pain in his head and his chest. 

“Hey, I can watch him for a while, you two have been fretting over him for a while already.”

Relief – the words finally stopped coming. So did the ringing in his head. He tried to relax back into the seafloor, like before, but it was getting brighter, too bright to quiet the sharp pain. If only he could lift his hand to cover his eyes – which he was surprised to realize weren’t even open. They were as heavy as the rest of his body, and he couldn’t bring himself to ignore his head long enough to force his eyes open. Another sound escaped him – weak and feeble, it was a small whimper that caused a burning different than what was already running through his body.  _ Sounds so frail. Should be ashamed. Supposed to be a leader.  _ This burning was in his head, not his body, but it still only served to compound his already extreme discomfort. 

“Hey, Apollo.” 

He didn’t want more words crowding his jumbled thoughts and initially tried to shrink back from the sound, but something soft and cool caught his cheek and kept him from turning his head. 

“You gonna wake up or would you rather just sit there looking pretty.”

_ Jerk. _ But there was no real malice behind the thought. Something about the voice seemed to pull him to the surface so quickly he hadn’t realized it even happened until he found himself drowning in two bodies of water of a different kind. He could see the light –  _ blinding, why was it so bright –  _ reflected in the two pools of blue-green that hovered over him. They were troubled, he could see the storms and waves that ravaged the small spaces clearly, and yet they provided him with more comfort than the placid ocean from which he had just emerged. “Hey.”  _ Burns. Don’t do that again. _

His scope of vision widened blurrily, revealing that the light-reflecting pools were set in a pale face framed by dark curls, with a mouth that quickly broke out into a crooked white smile. Light shining out through the darkness –  _ Grantaire.  _

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty.” Grantaire’s long fingers moved from his cheek to his shoulder, the calming chill seeming to spread through his body at the movement, relieving some of the burning ache he felt. “Do you want some water?”

Grantaire didn’t wait for a response, instead sliding his hand under the mess of Enjolras’s sweaty locks to cup his head, guiding him gently towards a cup of water which Grantaire had taken off the bedside table. The satisfying rush of liquid down his throat made Enjolras realize just how parched he had been, but the thin stream flowing down was severed after mere moments. Enjolras allowed Grantaire to guide his head back onto his pillow, reveling in the warmth that was pouring through his fingertips to loosen the tangled mess of aches and pain knotted in the base of Enjolras’s skull. This respite from discomfort allowed a new wave of exhaustion to crash over him, and his eyes began to droop once again, Grantaire’s face fluttering in and out of his hazy perception.

“That’s it, Apollo. Sleep, I think you earned it.”

_ I want to stay.  _ He didn’t want to lose the face still hovering over his. Grantaire’s usual sarcastic front had been lifted, and his feverish brain was struggling to soak up as much of this moment as it could. He didn’t want to go back into the deep, placid water – he wouldn’t do it. Grantaire brushed a gentle hand across Enjolras’s cheek, his forehead, his eyelids; Grantaire leaned his forehead against his, and Enjolras quickly found himself submerged in cool green waters.


End file.
